Israelis Are Hostages of Netanyahu

“We’ve received terrible news,” Carmit Palty Katzir announced on Facebook on Saturday: Elad, her brother who had been held hostage by Hamas since October 7, was dead. Carmit already lost her father to Hamas gunmen that day and her mother had been held in captivity for over a month until she was released in exchange for Palestinian prisoners. Though she noted the military’s “courageous operation” to retrieve Elad’s body, Carmit excoriated her country’s leaders for allowing him to die in Gaza. He “could have been saved if a deal had been reached in time,” she wrote. “Our leadership is cowardly and motivated by political considerations, and that is why that didn’t happen.”

Protesters feel the same way. On Saturday, Israel was rocked by the largest demonstrations against the government since the war began six months ago. Some families of Israeli hostages marched to Benjamin Netanyahu’s home carrying photos of the captives, torches, and banners reading:

“WE’RE ALL HOSTAGES.”

Hostages, that is, of the prime minister and his incompetent government that failed to stop Hamas from killing some 1,200 people and taking another 250 hostage, more than half of whom remain in captivity.

“Six months later, and Netanyahu and his entire government fucked this up, and they’re still there,” says Itzhak Amar, a taxi driver in Tel Aviv. “It’s a middle finger to all of us. He’s just hanging on by his fingernails.”

On trial for corruption, unwell (he underwent mysterious “hernia surgery” last week), and clinging to power, the 74-year-old leader is also trapped. Netanyahu refuses to entertain a commission of inquiry “until after the war,” a time he refuses to identify, presumably because that would finally be the end of his political career.

In the past week, prominent family members of some of the hostages began to openly say Netanyahu was sabotaging any hope for their release. On Saturday night, Katzir and numerous other families accused him of “torpedoing” efforts to achieve a deal that would release hostages in exchange for Palestinian prisoners and a ceasefire, which would likely fracture his coalition and lead its more radical members to bolt in protest over what they consider a precipitous end to the war.

Rumors have circulated in Jerusalem for weeks that Netanyahu has been slow-walking negotiations by refusing to give his representatives real authority to make a deal with Hamas. On Thursday, President Biden “urged the prime minister to empower his negotiators” to conclude a deal to bring Israeli hostages home, according to the White House, in a stern call after Israeli forces killed seven members of the World Central Kitchen aid group delivering food to Gaza.

Amar, the taxi driver, stopped outside Habima Plaza, once a tony hub surrounded by cultural institutions, now renamed Hostages Square, where the captives’ desperate family members camp out in tents. Poster-sized portraits of their loved ones line the square, some adorned with pink hearts (the freed or the rescued) and some adorned by black ribbons (those killed). On Saturday, Elad Katzir’s picture was covered in black.

Families of the Israeli hostages march with torches and photos of their loved ones last week in Jerusalem. The sign reads: “We’re all hostages”. Thousands of Israelis gathered around the Knesset to protest against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, followed by a march led by the hostages’ families to Netanyahu’s residence on Azza Street — demanding an immediate hostage deal and general elections. Protesters later clashed with the Israeli police at a barrier erected around Netanyahu’s house.
Photo: Matan Golan/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images

Netanyahu’s refusal to resign after presiding over the worst disaster in Israel’s history — let alone fire a single minister, military, or intelligence official over it — has left Israel feeling frozen in the amber of October 7. The war is not over in Gaza or at home where some 200,000 Israelis remain displaced from the south and north due to threats from Hamas and Hezbollah, respectively. As the six-month anniversary approached, Israel braced itself for yet another attack, this time directly from Iran in retaliation for a general killed in Syria by the IDF last week. On Thursday, people’s phones in Tel Aviv told them they were in Damascus, or in some cases Beirut. The geolocation failure was caused by the Israeli army scrambling GPS signals to thwart any incoming Iranian missiles — though the army failed to inform residents, prompting widespread confusion and massive traffic jams.

If any snapshot symbolizes the desolation of Israelis over the past six months, it is the remarkable video of a confrontation between Reuma Kedem, a renowned Israeli fashion designer, and Yoav Gallant, Netanyahu’s defense minister.

It was a chance meeting. Kedem lost her daughter, Tamar, three grandchildren, son-in-law Johnny, and his mother, Carol on October 7. On January 11, Kedem had returned to the destroyed community of Nir Oz to salvage some personal mementos. Behind their ruined home, she was surprised to find herself face-to-face with Gallant, who, like other Israeli ministers, no longer announces his whereabouts for fear of being jeered by the public — but brought cameras to document his visit.

“Where were you?” Kedem beseeched the defense minister, who stood silent and expressionless while she spoke, pointing to the destruction all around them. “What are you doing? This trash government… This wasn’t fate. These were people who didn’t do their jobs.”

Kedem, whose father was a founder of the IDF’s vaunted cyber intel Unit 8200, said that a single warning would have saved 1,200 lives.
“Tamar would have left after one phone call,” she cried to Gallant, over and over again. “Tamar would have left after one phone call.”

“My heart is gone,” she said. “My heart was burned away.”

Speaking on the eve of the six-month anniversary of their murders, Kedem says “there’s been no change. Change for the worse.”

Even after her encounter with Gallant, which went viral in Israel, she says “no one has called us. No one from the government. No minister. No deputy minister. No one.”

She believes the state itself has collapsed. “It took me two weeks to find my daughter’s and grandchildren’s bodies,” she says, her voice a thin whisper. “No one knows anything.”

“We were abandoned completely,” says Reuma Kedem. On October 7, she and her husband sheltered inside their home in Kibbutz Ein HaShlosha as Hamas attacked. She lost six members of her family and says it took authorities two weeks to identify her grandchildren’s remains. Today the Kedems are among those displaced from the country’s south.

“The prime minister has forsaken us. Hamas isn’t our problem,” she says. “We are hostages in the clasp of Netanyahu, Ben Gvir, Smotrich, and Levin” — a list of Netanyahu’s more radical associates.

“We’ve learned that we were completely abandoned,” she says of the six months since October 7. “Abandoned. Abandoned. Abandoned.”