Zvika Mor, father of former hostage Eitan Mor, to join Smotrich’s Religious Zionism slate

Zvika Mor, father of former hostage Eitan Mor, is joining Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich’s Religious Zionism party and will be placed in a high position on its electoral slate, the party announces.

Mor, a member of the Religious Zionist community and resident of the West Bank settlement of Kiryat Arba near Hebron, declared his intention to enter politics in March.

He led the Tikva Forum, a small group of hostage families who — unlike members of the larger Hostages and Missing Families Forum — consistently opposed partial hostage-release agreements with Hamas that involved the release of Palestinian security prisoners and temporary ceasefires in Gaza.

Smotrich repeatedly opposed hostage deals and, on multiple occasions, threatened to quit the government over proposed agreements.

In an interview shortly before his son’s release in October, Mor said that the deal to release Eitan was “very far from what we wished for the State of Israel, because we have to pay for our hostages with 250 terrorists with life sentences – murderers who will no doubt go back to murdering Israelis.”

Mor added that when Eitan returned from captivity, he would understand and support his father’s opposition to previous hostage-ceasefire agreements.

Mor has backed the probe by the state comptroller to examine the failings surrounding the October 7, 2023, Hamas invasion, which critics fear will act as a largely toothless substitute for a more substantial state commission of inquiry into the massacre.