Released hostage says Ben Gvir’s comments worsened conditions in captivity
Successful rescue mission of four captives in June led Hamas captors to tie abductees together in chains to obstruct future operations, says ex-hostage Eliya Cohen
Comments made by far-right MK Itamar Ben Gvir about Palestinian prisoners during his tenure as national security minister led Hamas to worsen the conditions of the hostages in Gaza, according to reported comments by a recently released captive.
The testimony was given by an unnamed former hostage, who was among the six released on Saturday, to Channel 13 news in a Monday evening report.
Upon becoming national security minister two years ago, Ben Gvir repeatedly railed against so-called luxury items in prisons, moving to ban fresh pita bread being served behind bars as well as to limit shower times for inmates. In the wake of the October 7, 2023, attack, he ordered new restrictions on security prisoners, including overcrowding and removal of beds. His policies have led civil rights organizations to petition the High Court of Justice.
Ben Gvir, alongside the rest of his ultranationalist Otzma Yehudit party, resigned from the government last month in protest of the hostage-ceasefire deal. He said his party would rejoin the government should fighting in Gaza resume.
Responding to the report, Ben Gvir wrote on X: “Channel 13 decided this evening to grant legitimacy to the horrors that Hamas committed against the hostages, with a report claiming that because of a change in prisoner conditions that I led, Hamas abused our hostages.
“It seems they forgot that the terrorists killed, raped and massacred Jews long before the [prison] reform. They don’t need any excuse to do that besides the fact that we exist,” Ben Gvir wrote.
“The essence of the conception is that if we just tolerate, bend over before the terrorists and lower our heads, they’ll do us the courtesy of stopping to kill Jews,” he continued. “The conception” is an umbrella term referring to the erroneous presumptions regarding Hamas’s intentions that enabled the October 7, 2023 massacre.
Tied together with chains
The Channel 13 report also featured testimony from Eliya Cohen, who was among the six hostages released on Saturday, alongside Tal Shoham, Avera Mengistu, Omer Shem Tov, Omer Wenkert and Hisham al-Sayed.
Cohen said that after a rescue mission that freed four hostages — Noa Argamani, Almog Meir Jan, Andrey Kozlov and Shlomi Ziv — Hamas terrorists worsened the hostages’ conditions.
Cohen recalled that in order to obstruct future Israeli efforts to rescue hostages, the captors chained the abductees together.
Cohen also said he was separated on Tuesday from hostage Alon Ohel, who remains in captivity.
The families of the six released hostages held a press conference on Monday to tell of the dire conditions in which they were held during their captivity. The hostages said they were chained, starved and denied necessary medical treatment.
Hamas-led terrorists killed some 1,200 people and kidnapped 251, mostly civilians, during their invasion of southern Israel on October 7, 2023.
Terror groups in the Gaza Strip are still holding 63 hostages, including 62 who were abducted by Hamas-led terrorists on October 7. They include the bodies of at least 36 confirmed dead by the IDF.
Hamas has so far released 30 hostages — 20 Israeli civilians, five soldiers and five Thai nationals — and the bodies of four slain Israeli captives — Shiri, Ariel and Kfir Bibas, and Oded Lifshitz — in the ceasefire that began in January.
The terror group freed 105 civilians during a weeklong truce in late November 2023, and four hostages were released before that in the early weeks of the war.
Eight hostages have been rescued from captivity by troops alive, and the bodies of 41 have also been recovered, including three mistakenly killed by the Israeli military as they tried to escape their captors, and the body of a soldier who was killed in 2014.
The body of another soldier killed in 2014, Lt. Hadar Goldin, is still being held by Hamas, and is counted among the 63 hostages.
The Times of Israel Community.