‘They’ve never taken responsibility’: Oct. 7 survivors, families rail at government on 1,000th day

As families mark 1,000 days since Oct. 7, the mother of a murdered hostage vows not to drop her demand for a state commission of inquiry into the disaster.

Esther Buchshtab, the mother of Yagev Buchshtab, who was abducted and murdered in Hamas captivity, says: “One thousand days have passed since the abandonment began. Military pressure did not save hostages — it harmed them. But the government continued on its path and failed to see the people who were there.

“We, who lived through the massacre and experience its devastation and loss every single day, will neither forget nor give up on the demand for a state commission of inquiry to investigate and explain what happened on the day of the disaster and what has happened since. We have returned to the kibbutz and still don’t know what caused the disaster of October 7 or how to prevent the next one. In the grief and pain I live with, I am not seeking revenge. I am seeking hope — hope for my family, for the people around me, and for Israeli society.”

Danny Elgarat, the brother of murdered hostage Itzik Elgarat, says at a rally outside IDF Headquarters in Tel Aviv: “For a thousand days I’ve heard over and over again people saying, ‘The hostages have returned.’ Not all of them have returned.”

Elgarat says, “Those who came back alive returned. Those who were kidnapped alive, abandoned in captivity, murdered, and brought back in a coffin — did not return. My brother Itzik did not return. Itzik was kidnapped alive and could have come back alive, but he was abandoned to die. And what came back to us was not my brother. What came back was a body, and no one will ever be able to blur that truth.”

Yoram Yehudai, father of Nova festival victim Ron Yehudai, says at a memorial held there today: “Above all, it’s a thousand days without Ron, a thousand days of a rent heart. A thousand days for the bereaved families, a thousand days of torment inflicted on the people. A thousand days of not knowing what happened and how it happened.”

Former hostage Omri Miran tells Kan’s Reshet Bet: “On the national level we don’t see any change in how things are being handled. We haven’t learned that lesson. Military officers tell me first and foremost, ‘We’re sorry, and we’re ashamed.’ I don’t see that from our leadership.”

Of far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich’s claim this week that he should be thanked for the return of the hostages, Miran says he “should stop talking nonsense. He bragged about having torpedoed so many hostage deals. It’s possible that more hostages who could have been with us today were murdered there.”

Miran says Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu should “take responsibility and start dealing with what taking responsibility actually means — instead of focusing on the draft exemption law for Torah scholars just to buy yourself another two weeks in power.”

Elad Or, whose brother Dror Or was murdered on October 7 with his body seized and taken to Gaza, said of Smotrich’s claim: “It’s such a huge lie. It’s part of the campaign the government decided to wage against us after it realized the public does care about the hostages and its citizens, and that the public is with us. For political reasons, the government launched a campaign against us, at our expense, trying to smear us — as if the disaster we’ve endured wasn’t enough.”

“The statements by these despicable people like Smotrich are just a continuation of that campaign. It’s infuriating but it’s not surprising. We’ve been hearing them spread these lies for more than two years. The only thing we can do on this day is tell the public the truth: what happened, and the scale of the disaster, the failure, and the abandonment for which they have never taken responsibility.”