Mother of hostage Matan Zangauker: End war if it brings hostages home

The mother of an Israeli hostage in Gaza calls on the cabinet to end the fighting in Gaza in order to retrieve him and others in a deal with Hamas.

“Declare an end to the fighting if it leads to the retrieval of the hostages,” Einav Zangauker, whose son Matan is in Gaza, says on Saturday at the weekly demonstration on Tel Aviv’s Hostages Square organized by the Hostages and Missing Families Forum.

The call to end the fighting is a recent development at Hostages Square rallies, where speakers had generally stopped short of calling for this specific outcome, which many Israelis oppose because they want to see Hamas’ rule dismantled in Gaza.

“No [parliamentary] seat in the world is worth my son’s life, or the lives of 132 hostages in Gaza,” Zangauker says in a speech to thousands of people on the square. “Stop clinging to your seat,” she says, addressing Netanyahu.

Zangauker, a former Likud voter from the city of Ofakim, which is one of the party’s bastions and where Hamas terrorists killed dozens of residents on October 7, also criticizes Benny Gantz and Gadi Eisenkot of the National Unity, a former opposition party that joined Likud’s wartime coalition.

“You did not achieve the goals of the fighting and you let Netanyahu kill deals for the hostages’ retrieval. You whitewashed Netanyahu’s crimes against the hostages,” Zangauker says, addressing the two former opposition politicians.