From the Liveblog of
Wednesday, July 30, 2025
Opposition leaders fume, demand firing of minister who called hostages ‘prisoners of war’
Add ToI as a Preferred Source on GoogleSam Sokol is a former political correspondent at The Times of Israel. He was previously a reporter for the Jerusalem Post, Jewish Telegraphic Agency and Haaretz. He is the author of "Putin’s Hybrid War and the Jews"
Opposition leaders slam Heritage Minister Amichay Eliyahu for suggesting that Israel define the 50 remaining Gaza hostages as “prisoners of war” rather than hostages, arguing that such rhetoric endangers the hostages’ lives.
Speaking with Radio Kol Chai this morning, Eliyahu, a member of the far-right Otzma Yehudit party, said that “the hostages should be defined as prisoners of war. Prisoners of war are only dealt with at the end of the victory. First, Hamas should be defeated.”
“After proposing to drop an atomic bomb on Gaza, and wipe out Gaza, now Amichay Eliyahu proposes abandoning the hostages to their deaths,” declares Opposition Leader Yair Lapid. “If he is not fired today, then the Israeli government is admitting to abandoning the hostages.”
Blue and White-National Unity chief Benny Gantz declares on X that “Israelis kidnapped in the greatest failure in the state’s history are not prisoners of war, and the very comparison endangers their lives and plays into Hamas’s narrative.”
“Also, in order to destroy Hamas’s rule and face all the challenges ahead, we must act to return all the hostages in a single comprehensive framework,” he adds.
“Amichay Eliyahu is simply saying openly what the government is doing and hiding. They decided long ago to sacrifice the hostages and prolong the war indefinitely. For them, this is a time of miracles,” writes Democrats head Yair Golan, in an apparent reference to Settlements and National Projects Minister Orit Strock’s statement last summer that the war had been “like a time of miracles” for the settlement movement.
“The vast majority of Israelis want to live in security and have the hostages back home. The Ben Gvir and Smotrich government wants messianic visions of expulsion, erasure, and settlement. We must fight these people and send them home,” Golan declares.
The Times of Israel Community.