Released hostages blast Bibi
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu faced harsh criticism from freed hostages and relatives of those still being held captive by Hamas during a war cabinet meeting, according to leaked audio of the heated event.
Recordings from Tuesday’s meeting revealed that the freed hostages had felt abandoned by their government during their weeks of captivity in Gaza, with several people shouting “Shame!” at Netanyahu while one woman accused Israel of conducting airstrikes near the place she and others were being held.
“The feeling we had there was that no one was doing anything for us,” the former hostage, who was not identified, told Netanyahu in audio acquired by Ynet.
“The fact is that I was in a hiding place that was shelled, and we had to be smuggled out and we were wounded,” she added. “That’s besides the helicopter that shot at us on the way to Gaza.”
The woman went on to blast Israel’s intelligence network, alleging that the government must have had “no information” at all about the hostages’ location given that their holding place was shelled during the IDF’s bombardments in northern Gaza.
The former hostage, whose husband remains in captivity, also accused Netanyahu and the government of abandoning the male captives in Gaza. The woman added that before they were separated, her husband would “beat himself every day,” causing him to bleed, because the conditions in Gaza were “too much for him.”
She and the other families accused Netanyahu of putting politics over the well-being of the estimated 137 people still being held in Gaza after a cease-fire agreement broke down last week.
“You put politics above the return of the kidnapped,” the
woman told the prime minister, alleging that winning the war is more important to him than the freedom of his people.
Netanyahu tried to assure them that his government was doing everything in its power to locate and free the hostages in Gaza, but claimed that force was the only way to do so.
“Until we initiated the ground invasion, there was nothing,” Netanyahu said of negotiations. “Nothing, nada, zero.”