Mother of Hamas hostage: War cabinet ‘delegitimizing’ Oct. 7 by not meeting families
Brother of hostage urges boycott of PM and government; father of slain dual US citizen Itay Chen says Biden called to console him, intimates Israeli leaders did not
The families of hostages held by Hamas in Gaza decried the war cabinet for not meeting with them, with one calling for a boycott of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the government.
“I am standing before you, after 159 days, begging the cabinet and the prime minister to meet with me, to see me,” Danny Elgarat, whose brother Itzik Elgarat is a hostage, said Wednesday, in a statement to the press alongside other relatives of hostages.
“So I say to you, this is my view, that the Hostage and Missing Families Forum should boycott the prime minister and the cabinet,” he continued.
“We don’t need to march for five days to Jerusalem, we don’t need to walk from Re’im to Paris Square [in the capital], and we don’t need to protest at the Kirya [military headquarters in Tel Aviv]. They need to stand here, and say, ‘We came, we want to see you.’”
Elgarat’s brother was among the 253 people taken hostage in Hamas’s shock onslaught of October 7, when Palestinian terrorists killed around 1,200 people, mostly civilians, during a rampage through southern Israel that included brutal sexual assault and torture.
More than 130 Israeli hostages are still being held in Gaza, dozens of whom have been declared dead in absentia by Israeli authorities, after 100 people were freed as part of a weeklong truce agreement in late November.
“A month ago, Hamas released a video featuring my little girl. I go to sleep every night with that image,” said Simona, the mother of hostage Doron Steinbrecher.
She said she has been asking to meet with the war cabinet “for weeks in order to get information and the request has been rejected again and again, leaving us with only the media.”
Meirav Leshem Gonen, mother of hostage Romi Gonen, accused the war cabinet of “delegitimization” by not meeting with them.
“I turn to the cabinet: When you avoid meeting with us for three months, you are actually delegitimizing what happened on October 7, and this is the most terrible thing that the country can go through again,” she said. “The pain belongs to the whole nation… The responsibility is on you.”
“The first request is that you meet us, that you see us.”
Also Wednesday, the father of an Israeli soldier killed on October 7 called for a hostage deal to ensure his son’s body is returned home and said he was going through a living hell, a day after learning of the death.
Itay Chen was serving along the border when Hamas carried out its surprise cross-border massacre through southern Israeli towns and military bases, sparking the now five-month-old war in Gaza.
The dual US citizen was believed to be have been held hostage, but the military confirmed his death on Tuesday.
“We know that they were in some sort of a battle and we lost contact with him, or the army lost contact with him, after a few hours,” Itay’s father, Ruby Chen, told Reuters. “The analysis after a couple of days was that he was kidnapped by Hamas. And he is still, as we speak, in Gaza.
“Even though we were given intelligence that provides an understanding that Itay is not alive, we still need a hostage deal, because… the basic human requirement that I think any viewer can relate to is that we want a funeral site,” he said.
Ruby Chen said the family had received a condolence call from US President Joe Biden, who earlier had made his own announcement about the 19-year-old’s death.
“It meant a lot to us to have him talk to us as a human being and talking about understanding pain and losing a loved one,” Chen said of the call. “I do not think we could have found a more friendly, compassionate, sympathetic administration than the Biden administration.”
In a separate interview with Channel 12 news, Chen said Biden gave him his phone number and told him to call anytime. Asked if Israeli leaders have called, Chen said he would like to not answer the question.
“As a father, as a parent, you want to have your son back and be able to mourn for him,” Chen told Reuters, as he appealed to Hamas to return Itay. “And I call to Hamas again — are you human? Or do you wish to continue to cause suffering, just for the sake of suffering?”
Reuters contributed to this report.
