From the Liveblog of
Monday, September 9, 2024
Stop stirring division: In recording of Netanyahu’s shiva visit, father of murdered hostage slams PM for ‘petty politics’
Recordings just released reveal a tense and angry conversation between Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Rabbi Elhanan Danino, the father of hostage Ori Danino, who was murdered in captivity by Hamas and his body returned to Israel last week.
Elhanan Danino accused the prime minister of engaging in “petty and cheap politics,” and blamed the October 7 massacre on divisiveness that he said Netanyahu and others on high have stirred in the country.
The exchange occurred when Netanyahu visited the family during shiva — their seven-day mourning period — to express his condolences over the loss of Ori Danino, an off-duty soldier with the Paratrooper’s Brigade who was captured from the Supernova music festival and held hostage for 11 months before he was murdered by Hamas. Danino’s body was recovered by troops from a tunnel in southern Gaza’s Rafah on August 31 along with those of Eden Yerushalmi, Carmel Gat, Hersh Goldberg-Polin, Alex Lobanov and Almog Sarusi.
“You people on high have to stop dealing with nonsense and stirring up fights and disagreement. Without unity, we don’t deserve this country; there will be no rebuilding without this land,” Elhanan Danino says to the prime minister.
“Shut your office for 10 minutes a day and think about where your Jewish values are. Shut it down, send everyone out, no phones, spend time alone with your creator and think, where is God in your picture, where are your Jewish values…?”
“This disaster happened because of the division and schisms we had here. It’s as clear as the sun that’s what happened.”
“Don’t spend time on petty and cheap politics and spin. There is no price on human life. I’m appealing to you here on behalf of those [hostages] who are still there [in Gaza]. I don’t dare to think about what the Goldin and Shaul families [whose sons were killed fighting in Gaza in 2014 and whose bodies have been held by Hamas ever since], who I sat with over the past 11 months, are going through,” Danino says.
“Wailing bitterly that by “a miracle” he has been able to bury his son in the holy land and the holy city of Jerusalem, he asks: “What kind of a situation have you brought us to” where the return of his son’s body is a relative miracle? “Wake up, please! Strengthen unity, strengthen love of Israel. Stop the spin, pins and nonsense, for goodness sake!”
“You are a leader. You were elected, sent to lead. Clear away all the nonsense. Too many other things have gotten in…”
Netanyahu asks: What things?
Elhanan Danino: “Stop dealing with gathering Knesset seats — with surveys, what will bring [support], what won’t. Stop it. I truly don’t know if there was a deal [to be done to save Ori and other hostages] or not. I’m not getting into that. But forgive me, sir, this all happened on your watch. My son was murdered in a tunnel that you built on your watch [by allowing funds and dual-use materials into Gaza]. Forgive me, forgive me. You’ve been in power for many years. Very many. The concrete and the dollars went in [to Gaza] on your watch.”
“I don’t know what happened with my son. We accept the [divine] verdict with love. But you are responsible for the lives of everybody,” Danino says. “I’m not part of the debate going on outside. We were silent for 11 months because we believe in the Almighty. Now, too, we believe in the Almighty. But I feel that nothing has changed.
“Shut yourself in a room and think about the Jewish value that you bring — not the Jewish identity of the State of Israel — we’ll control here, control there. In the end, the Holy One Blessed Be He does everything. Strong as we were before this, on Simchat Torah we got a slap unlike any other. A slap. Neither the air force, nor the infantry [were any use]. My son was in the armed forces. Let nobody say I’m some dos [derogatory slang for ultra-Orthodox] who doesn’t believe in the army. I educated him to serve in the army. I was in the army.”
Netanyahu: “I won’t tell you what goes on behind closed doors. It won’t interest you that much either…”
Sara Netanyahu interjects: “You were pretty much alone.”
Netanyahu: “Alone… Against the whole world. Facing the president of the United States and people here, and facing military elements here.”
Sara Netanyahu: “And facing army elements here.”
Netanyahu: “To fight and to explain. It’s not only Hamas. It’s not only Hezbollah. It’s an atomic weapon they’ll drop here on all of us… I enter [my office] every day and ask myself, Why are you here? What am I here for? Why?…”
Elhanan: “You didn’t do it [tackle Hamas] for 15 years…. 15 years you sat in silence. You did nothing.”
Netanyahu: “I didn’t sit in silence…”
Elhanan: “You equipped them with swords. You equipped them with tunnels and dollars… Did you come here to listen or to be listened to? Because what you have to say we’ve heard for 15 years.”
Later in the conversation, Channel 12 news reports without broadcasting the audio, Netanyahu says he burst into a plane to save hostages and that he knows what it’s like to lose a loved one because he lost his older brother Yoni.
Ori Danino’s brother is said to interject: No, no, you don’t understand. You built your career on your brother’s back. Enough already. I buried my brother! Your brother was a true national hero. Where did that get lost? I don’t know.”
A member of the family is said to add that while Ori will be remembered as a good person, Netanyahu will not.
Netanyahu is said to respond: I’m not the issue, and how I’m remembered is not important. You have the right to think what you wish, and I respect that.
Elhanan Danino is then said to tell Netanyahu he won’t get divine assistance (“siyata dishmaya”) until he shows Jewish values, berate him for having lost the Zionist values he had at age 22, and assert that the Netanyahu of 50 years ago would have destroyed Hamas before it became a monster.
Sara Netanyahu is then said to accuse Elhanan of saying things others have told him to say.
Nobody tells me what to say, Elhanan is said to respond.
