Mother of kidnapped IDF soldier: ‘Netanyahu, the responsibility to bring our sons home is yours’

Family members of IDF soldiers held hostage by Hamas in Gaza are set to meet Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu today, for the first time since the hostages were captured on October 7.

Ahead of the meeting, the families hold a press conference at the IDF recruiting offices in Tel Hashomer, near Tel Aviv, calling on the government to reach an agreement to secure the release of all of the 130 hostages still being held by terror groups.

“Prime Minister Netanyahu, the responsibility to bring our sons home is yours,” says Orna Neutra, whose son Omer Neutra, 22, was seized on October 7 while serving as a tank commander near Gaza.

“At the request of the state and the security forces we stayed silent until today. They scared us,” says Anat Angrest, whose son Matan Angrest, 21, is held captive. “Today we understand that as the number of days of silence grows, the number of boys who return home alive decreases.”

“Every home in Israel knows the feeling of sending a child to the army,” she continues. “The pride, the concern, waiting for the weekend when your child will show up in uniform at the door, and we, the mothers, get a big, strong, bearhug. And we’re recharged, and become the world’s best cooks.”

“For six months, we’ve known that our children are suffering and we have no way to help them,” she says. “We don’t even know if they’re still alive, if they’re surviving hell.”

“These are children who just finished school, they still live at home. Their younger siblings walk by their empty rooms, asking the most innocent, most difficult, most heartbreaking questions.”

“Why is the government agreeing to put their heroes last? Are they less important than the others?” she asks.

The soldiers were among 253 people who were kidnapped on October 7 massacre, when some 3,000 terrorists burst across the border into Israel by land, air and sea, killing some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, many amid horrific acts of brutality and sexual assault.

It is believed that 130 hostages abducted by Hamas on October 7 remain in Gaza — not all of them alive.