Released hostage refuses to meet Netanyahu for ‘photography and PR’ meeting while 109 still held in Gaza

A hostage who was released by Hamas in a week-long truce in November after five weeks in captivity declines Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s invitation to a meeting tomorrow, which she claims is for “photography and public relations purposes.”

“Thank you for the invitation, but I will not take part in the meeting for photography and public relations purposes while my friends are languishing in the Hamas tunnels in Gaza,” Margalit Moses, 78, writes in a public statement.

Moses was kidnapped by terrorists from her home on Kibbutz Nir Oz on October 7 along with her ex-husband and close neighbor Gadi Moshe Moses, 79, who remains in captivity in Gaza. She was released on November 24 as part of a temporary ceasefire deal brokered by Qatar and the US between Hamas and Israel.

“I saw them alive in captivity with my own eyes, and now due to the second abandonment since October 7, we get them back in coffins,” she writes, referring to the IDF’s extraction from Gaza this week of the bodies of six hostages who were killed in captivity.

“In light of the reports of another [hostage-ceasefire] deal being thwarted on your part to release the abductees, I see no reason to come to a meeting with someone who proves by his actions that releasing the hostages is not top of mind and abandons them to their deaths,” she says, adding that she would be happy to “meet you at the reception for the 109 abductees upon their return to their families.”