Netanyahu and Kahanist allies wage psy-war to sacrifice captives for conquest of Gaza
Uncaptured Media obtains an exclusive recording exposing Netanyahu and his Kahanist collaborators’ plot to sacrifice hostages and demoralize their families' efforts to pressure for an exchange deal
On October 15, the Israeli Prime Minister’s office communicated to the Hostage and Missing Families Forum, the main organization that represents almost all of the families of the captives in Gaza, informing them that they would meet with Benjamin Netanyahu at the Home Front Command in the central city of Ramle. Given just two hours' notice and told one representative each from five families would be allowed in, they quickly organized themselves and raced off, believing Netanyahu was sincere in his desire to bring the captives home.
It had been eight days since the surprise Hamas attack that led to the deaths of some 1,123 Israelis and 240 others taken captive into Gaza. The families had yet to meet with Netanyahu and had grown desperate as the prime minisiter and war cabinet kept them in the dark about plans to secure their safe return as calls for vengeance and the total destruction of Gaza dominated Israel’s national discourse.
Netanyahu had appointed reserve Brigadier General Gal Hirsch, a scandal-ridden Likud functionary described by a family member of a captive as a “B-movie general” to head a task force. Lacking will or resources, he had accomplished nothing.
The day before the meeting, National Security Council chief Tzachi Hanegbi publicly rejected negotiations to secure the captives, prompting outrage from the families and an impromptu vigil and protest outside the defense ministry in Tel Aviv.
At the meeting, seated around a table with Netanyahu, chief of staff Tzahi Braverman, media adviser Topaz Luk, and Hirsch, the family members recounted one-by-one horror stories of losing communication with their loved ones and learning that they had been dragged into Gaza.
Less than 20 minutes into the meeting, according to family members of captives who were there, an aide to Netanyahu entered the room and announced that another group of families of captives had arrived. Several religious Zionists, identifiable by their distinctive style of dress, then entered the room, none of whom were familiar to the families already inside.
As those families would soon find out, Netanyahu, the group of religious Zionist latecomers, and a broader political network of extreme right-wing Kahanists, had fired the opening shot of a total psychological, political and media war against the families of the captives, seeking to demoralize and confuse them, and drown out their calls for negotiations with Hamas in the national cacophony of calls for vengeance.
Uncaptured Media has obtained a recording of the meeting, which begins just after the latecomers’ arrival.
The first latecomer to speak was Ohad Zvi Lapidot, a dual Canadian-Israeli citizen whose daughter, Tiferet Lapidot, was missing from the Nova rave – believed to have been taken captive into Gaza, though days later would be confirmed dead.
“We are in a historic moment, and in this historic moment, personal pain can’t drive you,” Lapidot told the prime minister. “It can drive me, I can lose sleep at night. I am asking you to show determination and coolheadedness. Do not take our pain into account. All of Israel is standing here, there is a whole history that stands here.”
Lapidot’s call to abandon the captives in Gaza shocked the families who had been there.
Galit Dan, whose mother, Carmela, 79, and autistic daughter, Noya, 12, were believed to have been kidnapped but were later found dead in Gaza, cried out.
“Really? Do you have children? You are willing to sacrifice our children?” she asked.
Lapidot continued to address Netanyahu.
“There is a Prime Minister, whose job is to see to the whole of Israel and the general role. There is a chess game, there are pawns…“ he stated, unfazed by the objections.
“But it’s not pawns! It's not pawns, it’s children! It’s old people, it’s babies! Civilian population. Sorry, Mr. Prime Minister, we are not here for a political discussion.” Dan shouted in exasperation.
“In the end, Israel has to win. That is the goal,” Lapidot insisted as arguments broke out. “There are the people of Israel here, there is a whole people here that look up to you and want – in this historic moment – to win!”
“If the Prime Minister won’t return the kidnapped - there won’t be a nation of Israel. It won’t have a right,” another woman chimed in.
Eliyahu Liebman, head of the settler council for Kiryat Arba and Hebron, two of the most extreme settlements in the occupied West Bank, and Tzvika Mor, also a resident of Kiryat Arba, came in as part of the group with Lapidot.
Their sons, Elyakim Liebman and Eitan Mor, who are longtime friends and reserves in the army’s Golani brigade, were working as security guards at the Nova festival and reportedly helped wounded partygoers evacuate amid the attack before being taken captive.
They delivered a similar message as Lapidot.
“We all love our sons crazily. It’s not that we or anyone here loves their son any less,” Liebman told Netanyahu. “But we also understand the national issue that they were murdered for being Jews in the land of Israel, and the damned murderers don’t care who they vote for and what group they belong to, and therefore it’s very important for us, for the security of the nation of Israel, for the next 100 years, that there will be maximum security.”
Mor concurred.
“I love my son very much. Like everyone here loves their sons naturally. But more than I love my son, I love the people of Israel. I want to care for the people of Israel for all the generations to come,” he commented to Netanyahu. “Therefore I want to empower you and the entire war cabinet and everyone working on this, that first of all, until the end, with all the necessary means, with all the power, like others have said here, that releasing the captives, to the last one of them, is one of the goals of the war. How to do it is not my expertise. Those who already did Entebbe will find a way to do this too, and we trust you 200 percent.”
Another latecomer, Ditzah Or, whose son Avinatan was taken captive with his girlfriend, Noa Argamani, in what became one of the most widely seen videos from the October 7 attack, urged Netanyahu to reject any prisoner exchange.
“Succumbing to terror brings us down to greater violence and higher prices of bloodshed,” she said. “I worry about my son with all my heart. I also don’t sleep, but I know for certain that the IDF can. It depends on you to decide that the IDF will do it in a determined manner, like the IDF knows how to, and will rescue the abducted with its own force, with the power of the infinite that it receives, and will bring them home safe and sound, the honorable way.”
As the families finished telling stories of their loved ones’ abductions, Netanyahu boasted about the bombing campaign on Gaza, and insisted that though the defeat of Hamas was the overriding priority, the government would also seek the release of the captives.
“We are inflicting on them a decisive victory,” he said. “If we don’t achieve an overwhelming victory, then your villa in the jungle of Caliphates will not be able to exist… Therefore the crushing victory is a precondition, but at the same time we will do everything we can, while we are achieving that victory, to bring back home as many as possible, all of them if it’s possible.”
Netanyahu told the families that denouncing Hamas in the international media would help secure the release of their loved ones, nonsensically describing it as both a clone of ISIS and an extension of Iran – which are opposite forces in the region.
“There is one thing that every one of you can do, and it helps us,” Netanyahu instructed. “I am not promising you that that will tip the scale, but they have a problem with that, and we know they do because they don’t want that image.”
When someone pointed out that Hamas had filmed and distributed footage of its attack and were not ashamed of their actions, Netanyahu insisted that their patron countries in Qatar and Turkey were highly embarrassed by it.
“It has turned against them. The blood lust is on one hand, they are proud of it. But suddenly it backfires on them. Right now, [it’s] the last thing they want,” he assured them.
With the tension seemingly resolved, Netanyahu and the various family members hugged before leaving. They would soon begin to realize what had transpired.
War is done through ‘psychological, media and legal measures’
Minutes after the meeting, as the families gave statements to the press outside the defense ministry, another body, using a nearly identical name as the established captive organization, called the Headquarters of the Families for the Return of the Kidnapped and Missing, issued a statement backing Netanyahu’s position against a ceasefire and exchange. The statement portrayed the meeting with Netanyahu as a session of total agreement, erasing the demand of the families who had pushed for the meeting, and echoing the statements of the religious Zionists who had arrived late.
“The Headquarters of the Families for the Return of the Kidnapped and Missing strengthened the Prime Minister – fight Hamas until victory. The representatives of the Forum of the Families of the Abducted and Missing have now left a meeting with Prime Minister Netanyahu, the families reinforced the government at the meeting – not to stop until the victory in the war. At the meeting, which was accompanied by many tears, the families thanked the Prime Minister for the meeting and called on the Prime Minister to be determined in the war, to eliminate all Hamas terrorists wherever they are, to rescue the abductees, to completely purge the Gaza Strip of weapons, and to bring full Israeli control over all the territory of the Strip Gaza. In the meantime, the Shabbat strike of the Headquarters of the Families for the Return of the Kidnapped and Missing in front of the Kirya [defense ministry] in Tel Aviv continues under the title 'We don't stop until we win.’” the release read.
When the statement was published, The Headquarters of the Families for the Return of the Kidnapped and Missing had just been created by Rabbi Gadi Ben Zimra, a settler rabbi who has sought to re-establish settlements in Gaza since Israel’s unilateral withdrawal in 2005 and called for the “banishment of Arabs from the land of Israel.” Ben Zimra, who has no family held captive in Gaza, spun the front group out of the Victory Headquarters, which he founded in the days after October 7 to support Netanyahu’s war on Gaza and call for expulsion of its Palestinian inhabitants and for building settlements. The group held small demonstrations around the country, placed newspaper ads and plastered the country with signs and stickers. A crowdfunding campaign has raised several thousand dollars, with donations accompanied by messages “Make Gaza an amazing city beach!”, “Back to Gush Katif!” and “Conquest, expulsion and settlement.”
The alternative forum’s statement was distributed to media outlets by Eran Schwarz, a public relations operative who is the spokesman for Honenu, Israel’s premiere right-wing NGO, which funds settler activity and provides legal defense to settlers and soldiers accused of crimes, particularly terrorism.
Schwarz is a cog in a network of fanatical settlers. He is married to the daughter of Baruch Marzel, the Boston-born disciple of the late Rabbi Meir Kahane who led Kahane’s Kach movement, which Israel outlawed in 1994.
In 2006, he was among 19 right-wing extremists restricted from the West Bank by a military order on behalf of the Shin Bet, Israel’s domestic intelligence agency. In 2014, he was arrested for assault of a police officer, and in 2018, he was exposed for running a fake Twitter account of supreme court justice Miriam Naor.
Unknown to the families, the CEO of Honenu, Shmuel Meidad, was also in the meeting with Netanyahu, having accompanied Lapidot, Liebman, Mor and Or, despite having no family members in Gaza. Though he did not speak, instead staying in the background and taking pictures, in a video released by the Prime Minister’s Office, Netanyahu is seen embracing Meidad, who appears visibly upset.
Meidad, associated with religious Zionist terrorism since the 1980s, founded Honenu in 2002, when he realized that, in his words, “war was no longer something done with swords and rifles, it entails a lot of psychological, media and legal measures.”
Today, known as the “mother base of the Hilltop Youth'', it is a central part of the right-wing’s power over the country and settlement enterprise. It has received endorsements and blessings from hundreds of rabbis, public figures and lawyers,
Meidad and Honenu’s team of lawyers have represented a who’s who of Israeli terrorists over the last three decades, from Yigal Amir, the assassin of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, to Ami Popper, murderer of seven Palestinians workers in 1990, to the killers of Muhammad Abu Khdeir, who was burned alive by 3 Israelis in 2014, and most recently Amiram Ben Uliel, convicted of a deadly firebomb of a Palestinian family in 2015 in the occupied West Bank village of Duma.
Netanyahu and his cabinet have close connections to Honenu. Kahanist lawyer Itamar Ben Gvir, also a resident of Hebron, worked at Honenu for years until Netanyahu appointed him as national security minister, where he continues to coordinate his activities with the Meidad. Netanyahu’s brother-in-law, Hagai Ben Artzi, is a member of Honenu’s public council, though they are reportedly estranged.
Multiple media outlets partook in Netanyahu’s operation against the pro-exchange families.
As soon as Schwarz had published the statement, Srugim, a leading media outlet of the religious Zionist movement, quickly published an article citing the alternative forum’s statement in support of the war, blindsiding the families who had pressed Netanyahu for the meeting.
Meanwhile, Tzvika Mor appeared on Israel’s Channel 14, a mouthpiece of Netanyahu. He didn’t mention who had organized the meeting, that he and the others had come late, or the disagreement. Instead, he recounted his message to the prime minister saying that he would “sacrifice” his son.
As the pro-exchange majority saw the statement from the newly-created anti-exchange forum, journalist Jacky Levi and his partner, Noam, who had five family members taken captive into Gaza, accused Netanyahu of orchestrating a plot to discredit the message of the forum.
"We feel that we are being kidnapped,” Levi said. “There's a deliberate intention here.”
“It seemed as if they had come to intentionally incite arguments among us,” another member of the Hostage and Missing Families Forum remarked.
Netanyahu’s office denounced claims that the anti-exchange families had been planted as “false, outrageous, shocking and unacceptable.”
However, multiple members of the anti-exchange group itself confirmed that they had been coordinated.
"I want to debunk the lie that we arrived out of nowhere, it's a lie,” Tzvika Mor said in an interview with Kol Barama Radio Station, railing against the pro-exchange families. “No one can just opportunely come in and meet the Prime Minister. We represent four families whose loved ones were abducted, and we wanted to convey a national message to Netanyahu. We need to stop this whiny behavior. We need to win the war. In a time of war the people of Israel have to make sacrifices, even when our children are there, and prevail.”
Shmuel Meidad went to extreme lengths to prove they had not arrived without invitation, having his lawyer issue a warning letter for a defamation lawsuit against claims they arrived “out of nowhere.
‘The day that nothing changed for Benjamin Netanyahu’
Since 240 Israelis were taken captive on October 7, cities across the west have held vigils and demonstrations, demanding their release. Hundreds of celebrities and public figures like billionaire Elon Musk have called for their release, while corporations have denounced Hamas. Marketing campaigns sponsored by anonymous figures spent heavily on digital billboards and trucks across the United States.
The Israeli government and its supporters have exploited international sympathy to drive support for Israel’s unprecedented mega-assault of Gaza, which, as many since-released captives have attested to, was the greatest threat to their lives, and has already killed at least three of them.
This irony was lost on the tens of thousands of rally goers in Washington DC who demanded the unconditional release of the captives while chanting “No ceasefire!” U.S. Sen. John Fetterman similarly covered his office in posters of captives, yet denounced calls for a ceasefire.
The Hostage and Missing Families Forum represents about 700 people from the 240 families of Israelis taken captive. It was founded by attorney Dudi Zalmanovich – who has been close to Netanyahu – and longtime political strategist Ronen Tzur hours after the October 7 attack. High-ranking former officials, top lawyers and diplomats joined the forum, many of whom have also been closely linked to Netanyahu, including former Mossad head Yossi Cohen, former Mossad negotiator David Meidan, who led negotiations for Gilad Shalit, and former Shin Bet head Yaakov Peri, among others.
For Netanyahu, the families’ demand for immediate negotiations and an exchange with Hamas represents a threat to the continuation of the war in Gaza, which is essential to his political survival. As long as the war goes on, Netanyahu can avoid prosecution for his numerous corruption crimes.
Netanyahu is no stranger to deceptions to achieve political goals, indicted on several corruption charges, and having astro-turfed support on social media and black ops against his political rivals. With the meeting in the defense ministry, Netanyahu and his right-wing collaborators had kicked off a scheme without precedent in the history of Israel, which is laden with dramatic episodes of captives, hostages and prisoners of war; A political group, together with four families of captives from its constituency, in connivance with the prime minister and his cabinet, created a body disguised as a popular forum in order to undermine an actual forum consisting of families who demand that the government negotiate the return of their loved ones from captivity.
It is particularly ironic that Netanyahu, who rode the legendary status of his brother, Yoni Netanyahu, who was killed rescuing captives in the 1976 Entebbe raid, is now doing everything possible to prevent the safe return of captives. But for Israel’s longest-serving prime minister, political survival comes at all costs.
“October 7 was the day that nothing changed for Benjamin Netanyahu,” a family member of one of the captives told me.
A series of deceptions
Netanyahu’s deception at the October 15 meeting was one in a series of schemes that have bewildered the trauma-stricken and desperate families.
Three days before the stunt meeting with Netanyahu, Victory Headquarters set up a tent outside Israel’s Defense Ministry where Shmuel Meidad’s wife, Eti, and a handful of others, sat to show support for the war cabinet’s Gaza policy, and to counter the families of captives and their demand to return their loved ones at all costs.
Tzvika Mor appeared at the tent following the meeting with Netanyahu.
“We don't want a round here, we don't want a second Shalit deal here, we want to crush the enemy here completely. Leave nothing behind,” he said.
Standing at the tent with Ditza Or, Ben Zimra claimed to speak on behalf of the families of captives and virtually all of Israeli society.
“99% of the Israeli people support the IDF and give full backing to the political system. Take the power from the people of Israel and from God to complete the job until the end. Part of our goal is to release the hostages, however we also want a complete annihilation of all the terrorists,” he said.
Another prominent religious Zionist settler group called Sovereignty filmed at their tent too, promoting the exact same messaging.
While Meidad lied and subverted meetings, and his wife hosted a protest against the position of the majority of the family members, families who are part of the main body suffered harassment and violence by shady characters.
One motorcyclist called Eli Elbag, the father of the captive soldier Liri Elbag, a “traitor" and told him that he wished "that your daughter dies", before attacking him. Elbag said that the assailant wasn’t the first, and believes someone is sending them.
Another right-wing man named Yohan Sarusi shouted “May Be’eri burn” at the families of the hostages, referring to the kibbutz that was destroyed on October 7. He came as a group reportedly organized through a Telegram called Yamin (Right).
In another video, he said "May the leftists burn, may the Arabs burn, may all of Be’eri burn.”
In a recording sent to the Yamin group, Sarusi said “I put a cock on everyone in Be’eri. And I'll say it one more time, Hitler son of a bitch left early. Another 2 million would have to be finished like this and then there would be nothing left and then we would be kings here without leftists, without the Erev Rav,” – using a biblical term for traitorous Jews.
The incitement turned violent when Noah Yochanan, 59 years old from Kiryat Gat, set fire to an encampment of the families calling for a prisoner exchange.
Netanyahu and the Tikvah Forum
As the families of Hostage and Missing Families Forum pressed for an exchange, the tiny minority of religious Zionists forcefully denounced them.
“Out of the 240 families of the abductees, there are a number of families who succeeded in mind engineering and with millions of dollars in funding from foreign parties – to create a situation where they are the dominant ones and they are the ones who supposedly represent the families,” Eliyahu Liebman said. “They create a false perception that they represent all families. We need to increase the offensive pressure, not surrender to terrorism.”
To achieve that, Liebman and Mor founded another rival group in mid-November called the Tikvah Forum.
An investigation by Israeli journalist Uri Blau revealed that the Tikvah Forum is closely associated with Israeli Minister of Heritage Amichai Eliyahu, who made headlines in November for calling to drop a nuclear bomb on Gaza, and more recently said “We must find ways for Gazans that are more painful than death” to break the Palestinians’ “national dream.”
A crowdfunding campaign, which has so far raised more than $151,000, is transferred to the forum through The Association of Community Rabbis in Israel, founded by Eliyahu and run by his brother, Ariel Eliyahu, who openly opposes a captive exchange. This organization has received over 1.5 million shekels ($410,000 USD) of support in recent years from the Ministry of Religious Services and the Ministry of Education.
According to Blau’s investigation, an internal document shows that the funds will be used to "reach a broad public exposure to our messages in the news channels, in the various media platforms and in field activities throughout the country. An exposure that will make a difference in public consciousness in the country.”
This organization is headed by Berale Crombie, a longtime strategic advisor to Jewish Power party head Itamar Ben Gvir who has become a confidante in recent years to Netanyahu, raising millions of shekels for astro-turfed demonstrations against his prosecution on corruption charges. Crombie is chairman of Rise Up 2023, which organized demonstrations in support of Netanyahu’s judicial coup attempt.
Crombie also played host to Simon Falic, the American duty-free billionaire mogul and patron of Netanyahu, Kahanist figures, and the settlement enterprise, touring the site of the Nova party next to Gaza.
The Tikvah Forum’s access to financial resources is evident through the polished propaganda pieces is publishes aimed at countering the message of the majority of the families.
Captives must ‘sacrifice for the collective’
As part of the Tikvah Forum’s goals, Tzvika Mor and Eliyahu Liebman have done numerous public appearances and media interviews, preaching their message against a ceasefire and for national sacrifice at every opportunity.
“If my son wasn’t kidnapped, he’d be fighting in the war. I would tell him to fight with all of his might for the people of Israel. I have two other sons fighting,” Mor said. “That’s how you act in a war. The individuals have to be able to sacrifice for the collective, or there will be no collective.”
Mor reiterated his message to the Los Angeles Times.
“We have to be able to sacrifice our relatives,” he said of Eitan. “It is my oldest son, the first to call me dad. But we cannot be weak.”
Unlike the majority of families of captives, he places full trust in their leadership and does not insist that the war cabinet inform him of their strategy to free his son, what he sees as a selfish act.
Eliyahu Liebman preaches a similar message.
“What are we as a country willing to sacrifice for abductees? Is it possible to sacrifice the nuclear reactor for one hostage? We need to raise the spirit of the people right now, there will be enough time to talk about what happened, but now, when every crisis comes, we ought to show new powers that we didn't know existed,” Liebman said at the Gush Etzion Regional Council.
Ditzah Or is less prominent in the media. Like the others, she insists that her son’s safe return should only come as a result of unleashing the full fury of the Israeli military on Gaza, and not in an exchange with Hamas.
“When Hamas is crushed, they will beg us to take back the captives and let them go,” she asserted.
Contradictory goals
Tellingly, the return of the hostages was not included among Netanyahu’s stated goals at the outset of the war. Eventually, the issue was added alongside the defeat of Hamas. However, Israel’s attempt to defeat the resistance movement – which was doomed from the start – negates the second.
As numerous returned captives have made clear, the most terrifying aspect of their time in Gaza was not that they would be harmed by Hamas, but that Israeli bombing would kill them.
On November 6, Hamas announced that 60 captives had been killed by Israeli airstrikes, including 13 in a single day. Since then, the Israeli military has recovered the bodies of other captives, likely killed in Israeli bombing.
Daniel Byman, Senior Fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, pointed to this contradiction in Foreign Affairs Magazine, writing that “Conducting high-intensity military operations while trying to free prisoners is exceptionally difficult. Just as Hamas places its forces among civilians, it uses hostages as shields. Friendly fire by the IDF has killed some Israeli prisoners, and IDF bombing has undoubtedly killed more. If military operations continue, Israel will likely be able to liberate some of those kidnapped, but it will also lose many in the fighting.”
Israeli military, rabbinical and political figures have also admitted the two goals negate each other.
Amir Rapaport, a journalist close to Israel’s security establishment stated that Netanyahu cannot achieve both goals.
“There are still some internal contradictions in the IDF's war plan that may prevent absolute success.
The main issue is related to the hostages: it cannot be ignored that the fighting indeed endangers their lives, and the immense pressure from the families on the political echelon is only expected to increase.
If we reach another truce negotiation, Hamas will not settle for just a cessation of hostilities next time because its main goal will be to use the hostage card to achieve a prolonged ceasefire. Then, the full contradiction between the goals of "weakening Hamas" and "returning the hostages" will be revealed.”
Rabbi Shmuel Prozensky, a senior fellow at the Jerusalem Center for Applied Policy, described the policy in similar terms. “These are two goals that somewhat contradict each other, unless there are miracles from heaven, hidden or visible,” he told the settler website Sovereignty.
Gabi Siboni, an Israeli military reserve colonel, and Kobi Michael, a former senior official in Israel’s Ministry for Strategic Affairs, described “tension between the goals of the war.”
Nonetheless, Netanyahu has maintained messaging to the families that more military action will increase their likelihood of returning alive. “The key is the degree of pressure we will exert on Hamas. As the pressure increases, the chances of releasing the abductees will increase,” he said.
Hannibal directive
The killing of captives by Israeli airstrikes and ground operations may not be accidental.
Israeli sociologist and military specialist Yagil Levy suggested that Israel is not trying to secure the release of the captives, but is trying to kill them, invoking a secretive military protocol called the Hannibal Directive. Previously applied only to soldiers, the Hannibal Directive involves killing Israeli captives in order to prevent the enemy from using them as a bargaining chip in negotiations.
“The government's decision to attack Gaza despite the presence of hostages in the bombed sites can be considered an extension of the ‘Hannibal’ procedure - that is, an attempt to thwart the continuation of the captivity even at the cost of risking the lives of the hostages. The obvious explanation is that the right perceives the pressure to stop the fighting as endangering the pursuit of victory and revenge in Gaza, and therefore the lives of the abductees are another reasonable sacrifice that must be made,” Levy wrote.
He noted that the 2016 state comptroller's report described “enthusiasm among soldiers and junior commanders for the idea of deliberately harming a hostage to prevent his abduction alive.”
Levy is not the only figure to suggest Israel is attempting to kill the captives in Gaza rather than secure their release.
In an interview with the Israeli media outlet Shomrim, a figure who was involved in the Shalit campaign, though whose identity is not revealed, said that Israel was invoking the Hannibal Directive.
“We are experiencing the flip side of the Shalit case,” he explained, referring to the 2011 deal that saw Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit exchanged for 1,027 Palestinian prisoners. “Hamas expected this to be a repeat of the Shalit case. They thought that they would kidnap Israelis and that we would cave in. I believe that it will not happen quickly - if at all. The State of Israel has implemented the Hannibal Directive on the whole of the Gaza Strip (since the current conflict erupted), based on the understanding that the moment we release prisoners, we are opening the door for countless more abductions.”
Genocidal ideology
These contradictions between the ferocious bombing of Gaza and the obvious danger to the captives are lost – or ignored – on the Tikvah Forum’s Eliyahu Liebman. He wrote a letter to the Netanyahu cabinet and Israeli military calling for a genocidal onslaught and full ethnic cleansing of Gaza, and initiating war throughout the region. These steps, he insists, will return his son and guarantee Israel’s security.
“We as a country cannot exist when there are Nazis next to us, we need to destroy them, every last one of them, we believe that if the IDF enters Gaza firmly without mercy, we will succeed in freeing the abductees immediately, the Arab Nazi enemy needs to get down on his knees and beg to release the abductees.
The State of Israel and the IDF must eliminate all those whose hands are covered in blood, and all those who helped the Arab-Nazis carry out the horrible massacre on Saturday, and the others who were not complicit must be pushed into Egypt until the last one, not a single Arab left behind in the Strip.
I want to convey a message to the government of Israel, in order to give security to the citizens of Israel, there must be a cure for the plague and mercilessly attack our enemy wherever they are, including in Judea and Samaria [the occupied West Bank], Iran, Syria, Lebanon and wherever there are Arabs who want to destroy us. It should be done without fear, we believe that God is with us and will help us, we will defeat our enemies.”
In another video, Liebman brandishes a rifle invoking the biblical story of Noah to call for a flood that cleanses “God’s enemies” in Gaza and the West Bank.
Mor, also with a rifle slung around his shoulder, explained why all Palestinians must be exterminated, warning that their babies will inevitably grow up to be Nazi leaders.
“The savages that killed and raped us on October 7 were children in the Hamas summer camps 15 years ago,” he told a group of settlers. “And today’s children will be, next summer, when it will be possible, will be children in the Hamas summer camps, but this time they will grow up on the ethos of October 7, plus additional hatred for us wiping out their houses. For the first time I understand the command of the Torah – ‘erase the memory of Amalek, babies, toddlers, women and men’. It’s unimaginable. How can we? But the prophecy tells you (only the prophecy): You see this cute baby named Adolf? In such and such years he will become Hitler.”
Political support for sacrifice
Key Netanyahu allies and senior military figures have openly expressed their belief that the captives should be sacrificed on the altar of conquering Gaza.
Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and Internal Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir opposed the deal to exchange the release of women and children, as did Netanyahu’s fellow Likud members MK Moshe Saada and Tali Gottlieb. Gottlieb has also called to drop a nuclear “doomsday device” bomb on Gaza, and to impose a total siege on Gaza in order to use food and water to recruit collaborators.
Orit Strock, a member of Knesset for the Religious Zionism party, denounced efforts to make a deal in the first weeks of the war. “It is necessary to make it clear…the goal of defeating Hamas does not bow to the goal of freeing the abductees,” she said.
Strock and the settler movement have long believed that recolonizing Gaza was a matter of time, and that human sacrifice would be necessary to conquer and colonize the territory.
“At the end of the day, the sin of the disengagement will be reversed,” she said in March as the Knesset passed a law legalizing settlements in areas in the West Bank that were withdrawn from as part of the disengagement in 2005, which also saw the withdrawal from military bases and settlements in Gaza. “I don’t know how long it will take. Sadly, a return to the Gaza Strip will involve many casualties… Ultimately it is part of the Land of Israel, and a day will come when we will return to it.”
An Israeli intelligence source told the Israeli publication +972 that “the lives of the hostages were a price that people in the army, especially senior commanders, were willing to pay.”
This was because they wanted to present the mass destruction of Gaza as their accomplishments. “My feeling is that [the army and political top brass] knew they were going to be forced to resign at the end of the war, and they wanted to present military achievements, among other things, as a way to protect themselves,” the source said.
Omer Dostri, of the Israel Defense And Security Forum think tank, which recently published a paper commissioned by the Pentagon calling for ethnic cleansing and colonization of Gaza, denounced a hostage exchange on November 21, falsely claiming that Hamas is defeated.
“The deal to release the kidnapped is a bad, flawed and dangerous deal. Hamas is in a continuous collapse, suffocating (literally) and trembling underground,” he wrote on his Telegram channel. “Instead of pressing the pedal and "Finish him", Israel holds back and allows Hamas to deceive it with psychological warfare, breathing space, time to reorganize, and the ability to militarily surprise the IDF.”
More recently, he published a paper arguing that another exchange cannot come at the price of a ceasefire.
“If Israel is interested in another hostage deal, it must declare that any new deal for the release of hostages must be done during the war only, and that the fighting will no longer stop, except for a few hours on the day of the actual deal,” wrote Dostri.
Religious justification
While Netanyahu and the security state agitated against another captive swap, numerous religious Zionist rabbis, including figures on the government’s payroll, provided a pseudo-religious justification based on their interpretations of Jewish principles and values.
Rabbi Dov Lior, the top rabbi of the religious Zionist movement and the spiritual leader of the Jewish Power party, along with dozens of other leading rabbis, published a letter denouncing negotiations and calling for the military to not consider the civilian population, using a genocidal biblical reference.
“In time of war, one should not consider the civilian population of the enemy, but only the protection of the citizens of Israel and the soldiers of the Israel Defense Forces. In time of war, the best of snakes – crack his head. War for God against Amalek… The captives will return from captivity and the people of Israel will return to all parts of our country," the rabbis wrote.
Rabbi Shmuel Eliyahu, the chief rabbi of Safed and father of MK Amichai Eliyahu and Ariel Eliyahu, who are involved in the Tikvah Forum campaign, gave a lecture on why there can be no captive exchange.
“If you cooperate with the murderers you are stained by their abomination. Don’t cooperate with them. If they’re asking for your cooperation they probably cannot win without you,” he instructed, making a biblical reference to call for genocide. “There are no innocent people among them, there is no such thing. Remember Samson – he destroys the house on everyone, those who murdered and those who didn’t.”
Rabbi Shlomo Aviner, a leading religious Zionst rabbi, gave a similar explanation.
“You cannot favor one person at the expense of other people. You cannot even favor one person at the expense of one other person. You cannot even save many people at the expense of one person,” he opined. “Of course, harsh things should not be said to the families. We understand them, of course. But a state cannot be run based on the good of the few at the expense of the whole country.”
Rabbi Uri Cherki, another top religious Zionist rabbi, described all captives – including children – as unwitting soldiers in Israel’s genocidal conquest of Gaza.
“What determines every decision in war, including hostage exchange, is if it contributes to winning or the opposite. And the question is only what is the result in the enemy morale. If the enemy feels that because of a certain deal they won or half-won, then we have lost the battle.”
“Our captives are not just captives, they are a part of the war. They are a part of our resilience that they [Hamas] want to break.
“The children – the young boys and girls – are soldiers. They are our soldiers. They are soldiers who didn't ask to be in this war, but they are a part of our resilience which is now being tested.”
“If we want to release our captives it has to be done through horrible cruelty – cruelty that won't stop until they return our last hostage, our last body. This is the language our enemy might understand.”
Rabbi David Bar-Hayim, the Australia-born founder of the Beth HaWa'ad rabbinical court in Jerusalem and head of the Shiloh Institute, declared that securing the release of the captives must be de-prioritized over achieving genocidal goals in Gaza.
"The overarching issue is the destruction of the people of Israel’s existential enemies. The hostages must, tragically, come second. This is heart wrenching but true. This is the fundamental moral imperative. Any other approach is immoral,” wrote Bar-Hayim.
Bar-Hayim has repeatedly hosted Jonathan Pollard, the former U.S. naval intelligence officer who spent three decades in prison for giving military secrets to Israel but was pardoned by President Donald Trump in 2021 and released. Pollard declared that the families of hostages who protest for an exchange should be imprisoned.
"When we declared war, the first thing that the government should have done was declare a state of national emergency and tell all of the hostage families 'you will keep your mouths shut or we will shut them for you. You will not interfere in our management of this war. You will not be used by the international community or by our own leftists who managed the [Gilad] Schalit deal as a weapon against us. If that means imprisoning to silence certain members of the hostage families then so be it."
Pollard and Bar-Hayim agreed that the supporters of the families are exploiting them in order to depose the Netanyahu government and prevent Israel from achieving its stated goals in Gaza.
“Every individual in these various self-appointed organizations that are ostensibly representing the interests of the hostage families should be given warning that if they do not stand down, they do not disband, and they do not cease to involve foreign countries or foreign interests in the management of this affair, they will be arrested and prosecuted.”
Pollard was unable to determine what crime they had committed but was nonetheless confident in his approach.
“The exact charges I'm not sure right now, but I'm sure that there are many that can be brought,” he asserted.
Minutes later, he had decided that the members of Hostage and Missing Families Forum were traitors to their country.
“What they’re trying to do is not only delay, but prevent the destruction of Hamas, but they’re also trying to undermine the credibility of the coalition government,” he said. “And some people might call that, well, treason.”
“Some people might,” Bar-Hayim responded, “And I would freely admit to being one of those people.”
“Me too,” Pollard replied.
In another video, Pollard declared that an exchange would kill all Jews in Israel.
“Trading 100 lives of hostages for seven million Jews – okay, that’s what we’re talking about,” he declared.
“We are all hostages,” Bar-Hayim agreed.
Rabbi Avi Grossman, Bar-Hayim’s fellow teacher at the Shiloh Institute argued to kill 1,000 Palestinians for each person taken captive in order to break the Palestinian will to resist.
“For every Jewish captive – every Jew captured or killed – we're going to kill a thousand of them. That would be a deterrent and that would greatly increase morale because it would make the bad guys stop,” Grossman proposed, accusing rabbis who support a prisoner exchange of having an “exilic mindset.”
Grossman also called on the Israeli military to avoid casualties – what he called “avoiding human sacrifice” – in Gaza, saying that they must “indiscriminately train their heaviest fire on the enemy from a safe distance.”
Rabbi Aviad Gadot, an Israeli military rabbi who has led demonstrations against an exchange, shouted at families of captives that “We will not allow anyone, even Biden or international pressures, to get in the way of the Israel Defense Forces vanquishing Israel’s enemies.”
Rejecting the captive exchange, calling for genocide
As negotiations for a temporary ceasefire and a hostage exchange heated up in mid-November, security officials, religious Zionist rabbis, and members of Knesset publicly rejected it.
Rabbi Dov Lior, Rabbi Yitzhak Ginzburg – who authored a book about when it is permissible to kill non-Jews including children, Rabbi David Druckman and Rabbi Eliyahu Zini, signed a letter rejecting an exchange and demanding more war.
"The right way for the abductees today is to continue the war with all our might without stopping, to strive for the elimination of the terrorist organizations and to increase the pressure on the enemy as much as possible, to reach a position of strength that will allow us to determine the conditions, and with God's help bring about the release of all the abductees,” the letter read.
“You are endangering our soldiers,” Rabbi Dov Lior said to Israel Today about the families of captives seeking an exchange. “The country must not surrender. Our enemies will benefit from this and we will lose. We have to stand firm against the deal."
Lior instructed the Jewish Party power to oppose the negotiations too.
“Our demand is a deal that will free everyone, but on our terms – without harming the further elimination of Hamas, and creating a deterrent for the other enemies around us who are now learning again that Israel is not subduing the Nazis, which increases the risk of a recurrence of the October 7 atrocities,” the Jewish Power party declared after they a meeting with Lior.
The Religious Zionism party published a statement saying “The only way to return all the abductees is by continuing to exert unceasing military pressure on Hamas until it is completely defeated. Religious Zionism will stand like a wall backing the continuation of the war until the complete destruction of Hamas, the return of all the abductees and the removal of the threat posed by the Gaza Strip towards the citizens of Israel.”
In their article mentioned above, Colonel Gabi Siboni and Professor Kobi Michael argued that the protests by the captives’ families were “problematic” and called on the Netanyahu government “to make it clear to the public and the families of the hostages that it is imperative to stick to priorities in the war on Hamas.”
“Only military pressure aimed at eliminating the organization’s military and governmental capacities can perhaps lead Hamas to understand that continuing to hold the hostages is no longer an asset, but rather a strategic burden. Only when the Hamas leadership realizes that this is its last chance to save something from the organization, which they may be able to rehabilitate outside the Gaza Strip, will Israel succeed in rescuing the hostages.”
Tikvah Forum members used all possible means to sabotage the deal, and lashed out at the other captive families and the Israeli government.
Eliyahu Liebman and Honenu lawyer Moshe Pulaski filed an injunction in Israel’s Supreme Court to block the deal, which was quickly rejected.
"We are not determined enough to overwhelm our enemy. What is happening now is a scandal,” Liebman complained on the pro-Netanyahu Channel 14. “You endanger all of the abductees, the soldiers and the citizens of Israel. This is surrender to Hamas. Don't give in. My son needs to come home, and all the abductees need to come back. But we have an overall responsibility. This is not an ordinary day. I ask you – take responsibility for the entire State of Israel.”
While his son languished in captivity, Liebman spoke at a conference a few miles away in Ashdod on re-establishing settlements in Gaza.
“God blesses us and blesses the IDF fighters and the state of Israel to conquer and inherit the land,” he preached. “We must settle that piece of land for the security of Israel.”
Tzvika Mor appeared at the Jerusalem College of Technology, demanding more violence against Gaza.
"We have not only 240 kidnapped Israelis, but 8 million kidnapped by Hamas, who decides when all of us will be able to sleep peacefully at night. We need to be free people in our country – a country that should be free of shelters, weapons, border fences and an Iron Dome. It's noble to die for our country,” he said, referencing the legendary Zionist fighter Joseph Trumpeldor’s last words, and adding his own twist. “But now is the time for our enemy to die for our country.”
Days later, Ditzah Or met with MK Zvi Sukkot, who led an October 6 pogrom in the Palestinian village of Huwara before being appointed to the Knesset Subcommittee on the West Bank and the Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee.
"I don't understand how the leaders who call for a ceasefire can go to sleep and look themselves in the eyes," Or complained to Sukkot. “The captors of my son and Hamas – they are the darkness of the world and represent evil. The whole world – everyone in the world who sees himself as belonging to the light – should unite and fight this darkness as hard as possible if we don't want the darkness to win."
Ohad Zvi Lapidot, whose daughter was originally thought to have been taken captive though was found to have been killed, was invited as a guest on Channel 14, where he too denounced negotiations.
"You cannot play here between blood and blood. Releasing terrorists brings death to our streets. The rules of the game must change – we do not release terrorists with blood on their hands, the story is over. We are done trading this thing, there are no releases,” he said.
‘Nothing is normal now’
On November 9, the prime minister’s office called a family member of one of the captives and invited her to a private one-on-one meeting with Sara Netanyahu in the defense ministry. When she arrived, she found that other women had been invited under the same premise, but all met as a group.
Soon after the meeting began, Benjamin Netanyahu joined. According to the woman, an unknown woman complained at length about a lack of normalcy in the country, in sharp contrast to what all of the families of captives were saying. Asked if the woman had a family member held in Gaza, she said that her friend’s son was a highschool classmate of one of the captives, leading the attendee I spoke with to believe she had been planted by the Netanyahus.
“It was bizarre,” she recalled. “It felt wrong, it felt different from other people that were there. It’s not what anyone from the families would say. Even now, it’s so difficult for us to return to a normal life. Nothing is normal now.”
A ‘circus of blood’
By mid-November, the families and their supporters, numbering thousands, embarked upon a five-day march from Tel Aviv to Netanyahu’s office in Jerusalem, eventually setting up a camp outside the Knesset.
“We want the government to come and talk to us. It’s been 43 days,” said Meirav Leshem Gonen, whose daughter Romi, 23, was taken captive from the Nova party. “Before making any decision we want them to look in our eyes to make sure they remember who we are.”
The demand was ignored by Netanyahu, though MK Benny Gantz, a former defense minister who sits in Israel’s war cabinet, and MK Gadi Eisenkot agreed to meet with them.
“Everything we are doing is aimed first and foremost at bringing our boys and girls home,” Gantz told the families in a meeting at the defense ministry.
Meanwhile, on November 20, Itamar Ben Gvir proposed legislation to impose the death penalty on Palestinian “terrorists”, worrying relatives of captives that Hamas would exact revenge on their family members. Former deputy attorney general Ran Nizri and former attorney general Avichai Mandelblit both argued that Israel already allows the death penalty, suggesting the session was meant to be inflammatory.
Nonetheless, families who attended the Knesset meeting were shouted down by Jewish Power party legislators and accused of being tools of the enemy.
“I am hinting that Hamas is trying to exploit you, yes. And I’m not hinting, I’m saying it openly,” shouted MK Almog Cohen. “This [death penalty for terrorists] does not contradict the goal of bringing back the hostages, and anyone who tries to present it as a contradiction is someone who is trying to represent Hamas more than the State of Israel.”
“Stop talking about killing Arabs and start speaking about saving Jews,” Hen Avigdori, whose wife and daughter were in captivity, shouted back.
Ben Gvir published a picture of himself hugging Gil Dickmann, whose cousin Carmel Gat is held in Gaza, and had broken down in tears as he begged the Jewish Power party representatives to drop the legislation.
Dickmann denounced Ben Gvir on Twitter, saying that he told him not to hug him, and that he was “making a circus with the blood of our families.”
That evening, Netanyahu and the war cabinet again invited the families to the defense ministry to update them on efforts to secure the release of the captives. However, upon arrival, some of them were not allowed in and told there was insufficient space, despite having registered their names ahead of time.
Some expressed frustration at the contradictory statements from Netanyahu and his war cabinet.
“A few days ago, we met with Gantz and Eisenkot. We heard from them in an unmistakable way that the overarching goal of the war is the return of the hostages,” said Udi Goren, whose cousin, Tal Haimi is held in Gaza.
But after the meeting, Goren said that Netanyahu told the families that the goal of destroying Hamas is considered equal to returning the captives, further dashing their hopes.
“What we’ve heard is that taking down Hamas and bringing the hostages [home] are … equally important,” Goren said. “This is incredibly disappointing because … we know that taking down Hamas, we keep hearing from them [it] is going to take months or years and it’s going to take a long time.”
Right wing journalist Kalman Liebskind denounced the families, writing a column in Maariv accusing them of serving Hamas’ interests.
“The state should have red lines after which it will have to inform the families that it will do everything in its power to bring their loved ones, but it will happen by other means. After using greater force, and greater destruction, and greater annihilation of Gazan neighborhoods, but not in deals,” he wrote.
While Netanyahu ignored the families of the captives and gave them mixed messages, he pumped out cartoon propaganda to foreign audiences portraying Hamas as the obstinate party.
When the Netanyahu government finally agreed to a pause in fighting and captive exchange, Tikvah Forum members insisted that Israeli bombing had forced Hamas to the table.
“Everyone understands that it was the iron fist that the IDF used that brought Hamas to ask for a deal,” Mor told 0404 News.
Tikvah Forum’s propaganda has reinforced this claim.
In reality, Netanyahu had secretly rejected Hamas’ proposal for a ceasefire and exchange in the days following October 7, eventually changing his position.
In a +972 report, an intelligence official later credited the families with pressuring Netanyahu to negotiate. “[I knew] if there was no public pressure for a prisoner deal, the abductees would die,” he said.
‘Obliterate Gaza and reconquer it, even at the expense of the hostages’
As small amounts of humanitarian aid began to trickle into Gaza, and captives were released and reunited with their families, Tikvah Forum members became even more enraged, holding onto their false belief that bombing had convinced Hamas to negotiate.
“What brought Hamas to make the deal was their strife in the north of the Gaza Strip, and if we had continued like this we would have gotten a much better and bigger deal, with many more hostages at home and in a shorter time. The one who is to blame for this is the one who pressured the government in a wild way to do it,” Ditzah Or told the news site Kikar. “The soldiers long to take our revenge. I want the state to give the green light and back up the IDF.”
Eliyahu delivered a genocidal speech at the 19th Kislev Redemption Festival in Ramat Aviv, comparing October 7 to the biblical story of Jacob and Esau, and again denouncing a captive exchange.
“Enemies need to be annihilated, and this is the most moral, this is Jewish ethic,” he said. “There are rules here in the Middle East. Deals cannot be made with such a murderous enemy. They just get encouragement from it. It endangers the rest of the hostages, it endangers the IDF soldiers, it endangers you – the citizens of the State of Israel.”
U.S.-born Israeli settler David Sidman urged Israelis to not be affected by the images of captives being reunited.
"What Hamas wants us to do is they want to divide the country into people whose priority is releasing the hostages through deals – and people like me and the other part of the country whose priority is to obliterate Gaza and reconquer it, even at the expense of the hostages,” he explained.
Do not “let images of Hamas fighters escorting children out of ambulances so they can reunite with their families disrupt our natural instinct to seek revenge and to basically kill these people,” he instructed.
Days later, Netanyahu met with the families and some of those who had been released, appearing 45 minutes late. This time, he sat on a stage, flanked by security guards. He read prepared remarks, telling them that “there is no possibility right now to bring everyone home, prompting calls for his resignation and for some to walk out of the meeting.
“I’m not prepared to sacrifice my son for your career or for those of any of the notables here,” one mother shouted at defense minister Yoav Gallant. “My son did not volunteer to die for the homeland. He was a civilian abducted from his home and his bed.”
The freed captives blasted Netanyahu, saying that they were nearly killed by Israeli airstrikes. The day before, Gallant had boasted to the families that, “We are continuing now to speak with our enemy about continuing to free hostages – speaking with fire.”
Sharon Aloni-Cunio, who had been released but whose husband, David Cunio, is still in captivity, rejected the claim that more bombing brought their loved ones’ liberation closer.
“You have no idea what’s even going on there at all. You claim that you have intelligence but the fact is we were bombed,” she said.
Tzvika Mor took to the radio to denounce the families.
“It's a shame that the meeting took place. The families of the abductees should be kept away from the war cabinet," he said. "Hysterical people in a difficult state of mind, or those who live in a culture of “I deserve”, it doesn't work. It's impossible for 200 people to come to get answers, the cabinet is supposed to act without emotion… for us to win, we must know how to sacrifice.”
In another interview, he said the families should have been kicked out of the meeting.
“The security guards should have been involved,” he complained. “The reason for the non-return of the abductees is that we are dealing with subhumans and only military pressure will return the abductees to us. If it were up to me I would not agree that the cabinet would meet with the families. The management of the war should be done with cold and matter-of-fact consideration and not with the crying of families.”
‘They want to burn down the Kirya’
With the end of the ceasefire and resumption of Israel’s ferocious bombing of the Gaza Strip, the families of the captives sought to meet with Netanyahu again. However, their request was outright ignored by his office.
Netanyahu, journalist Yossi Verter wrote, gave the “signal for launching a blitz” against the families. “His agents and mouthpieces, spouting venom, are trying to sow division among these families, using X, Telegram and WhatsApp groups.”
Enraged, the families began to consider radical actions, including placing buses outside of facilities where Hamas prisoners are held and announcing their willingness to exchange prisoners for captives.
"They wanted to burn the Kirya down," Verter wrote.
On December 13, Biden and Secretary of State Antony Blinken hosted 13 family members of some of the 8 Americans believed to be held captive in Gaza. However, that effort did not materialize into further negotiations. The next day, Netanyahu rejected a proposal by Mossad head David Barnea to travel to Qatar to negotiate a new captive exchange deal.
‘A tactical mistake’
On December 16, Israeli soldiers killed three captives in the Shujaiya neighborhood of Gaza. According to the government’s version of events, they were waving white flags and shouting in Hebrew when they were shot.
While the father of one of the killed captives denounced Netanyahu and said the government “murdered my son twice,” the right-wing insisted that it was a success.
Prominent right-wing journalist Amit Segal, the son of terrorist-turned-journalist Hagai Segal, commented on X that the Shujaiya incident “has proven once again that military pressure brings opportunities for the release of hostages.”
The Tikvah Forum claimed that the relentless bombing campaign compelled Hamas to release them.
"We estimate that what made the escape of the boys possible was the military pressure exerted on the terrorists,” they said, without any evidence. “There is no other reason why the kidnappers would have given up such an important asset.”
Despite the fact that the only captives who have returned home alive have come through ceasefire and negotiations, the Tikvah Forum insists that more bombing will bring the captives home.
“The tragedy that occurred, unbearably difficult, did not violate the principle that the continued pressure on Hamas, military and political, is the one thing that will lead to the release of the abductees.”
Moreover, they say that demonstrations in favor of a hostage exchange “will actually increase the price of any future deal and make the possibility of the release of the abductees far away."
Tzvika Mor was even more explicit.
“If we had achieved that the three young men would have been accepted into the arms of the IDF, we would have celebrated in Yarkon Park. The very principle that Hamas abandoned them and fled for their lives proves that the military principle works. There wasn't a strategic mistake here, but a singular tactical mistake. The strategy is very correct and it will bring us closer to the abductees,” he told the news site Srugim.
His wife, Efrat Mor, holds onto the image of her son being returned after successful military operations.
“I imagine the abductees being returned powerfully by our soldiers in a sophisticated military operation, and not by surrendering to deals that only weaken us and cause more transactions in the future and more kidnappings,” she told Channel 14.
A poll conducted by the Israeli Democracy Institute found that a whopping 65% of Jewish Israelis agree, despite the results, that unrelenting war against Gaza is the best way to bring the captives home.
Pining for genocide
With the killing of the captives in Gaza thrusting the urgency of the issue back into the international spotlight, Netanyahu reversed his position and sent Barnea to meet with Qatari Prime Minister Abdularhman Al Thani to resume negotiations.
At the same time, he again invited families of the captives to meet him and Sara Netanyahu at the defense ministry in Tel Aviv.
"We are committed, and I am personally committed, to the release of all of the hostages. Rescuing them is the highest mission,” he told them. “Just now I twice sent the Director of the Mossad to Europe to advance a process for the release of our hostages. I will spare no effort on the matter and the demand is to bring them all."
Days later, Netanyahu once again canceled negotiations.
While thousands of Israelis demonstrated for negotiations to release the remaining 136 captives, the Tikvah Forum members reiterated their calls for genocide.
Eliyahu Liebman appeared on December 17 at a tribute evening to the 9208 Battalion of the Negev Brigade, which devastated the northern Gaza area of Beit Hanoun in preparation for settlement while publishing videos of their brutish behavior.
He shared the stage with Major Yair Ben David, who boasted how his battalion waged a genocidal war.
“The people of Israel on Simchat Torah received a painful blow. They hurt the honor of our people. Battalion 9208 entered Beit Hanoun and did what Shimon and Levi did in the city of Nablus,” Ben David said, referring to the biblical story of killing all of the city’s male inhabitants. “But the task is not over, we still have the whole of Gaza to do like Beit Hanoun.”
"It's a great privilege to come and congratulate the fighters,” Liebman told them. “I left strengthened by the strength of the battalion's steadfastness and the wonderful spirit of heroism of the battalion that represents the entire Israeli mosaic. The people of Israel live.”
Another of Liebman’s sons, Elkana, who was waging war in Gaza, published a demand that the Israeli government allow the military to complete the ethnic cleansing and colonize the territory.
Tzvika Mor spoke at a youth seminar called ‘Sowing Sovereignty in Gaza’ at the Gush Katif museum in Jerusalem with Likud MK Amit Halevi, held by the settler group Sovereignty.
Mor called to wipe out villages and kill hundreds of Palestinians as punishment for throwing paint at army vehicles.
He insisted that genocidal violence would bring his son home.
“I mean cutting off electricity, water, supply, everything in Gaza, and simply erasing neighborhood after neighborhood until our son is returned. That's how it should be done,” he calmly stated.
Mor revealed to the group that he was singularly focused on doing everything possible trying to derail efforts to pressure the government for negotiations to return the captives.
“I am now concentrating solely on the success of the war,” he said. “Have I forgotten about my son? I haven't forgotten about my son. I walk with him all the time with the picture, I walk with him all the time in my heart, but I act and think mainly about the success of the war, in a positive way, and I am also busy in preventing all sorts of factors from disturbing the war effort, that unfortunately this is part of the story here.”
Ditzah Or stood by the government’s decision to reject negotiations. “They are the messengers of good,” she told the state-run Knesset channel.
Asked what message she would like to send to her captive son Avinatan, she replied, “I would like to tell him that we are in the war of the children of light against the darkness. In this horrific event you are chosen to be at the forefront of the light warriors. You are now in the heart of darkness, make your war.”
Despite reassurances from Netanyahu, national security council head Tzachi Hanegbi weighed in on the possibility that Israel would knowingly kill captives if it had intelligence that a strike would take out Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar.
“It's a situation we can reach and it's a heartbreaking dilemma – but that means we've reached it and it means we've played a huge part. In the end, decisions will have to be made,” he remarked.
Permanent war against the families
Two days after Israeli soldiers had gunned down the three hostages, Netanyahu used the anti-exchange families to kick off another psy-op against the families of the Hostage and Missing Families Forum.
Seated at a meeting with his war cabinet on December 17, the prime minister held a letter from a group called The Heroism Forum, composed of dozens of families of soldiers killed in the current war, and whose demand to see their sons’ deaths not be in vain provided a powerful counterweight to the demand of the captives’ families who called for ceasefire.
"The people are strong and their opinion is firm. You have a mandate to fight, you do not have a mandate to stop in the middle. This is the will of the fallen and this is our duty," Netanyahu read aloud.
However, this letter, like the statement delivered following the October 15 meeting with the captive families, was delivered by Eran Schwarz, and used the same language as a letter released the night before by the Tikvah Forum.
The Heroism Forum had been founded online just two days before, and its first tweet was the letter that Netanyahu read. Its stated goals are identical to those of the Tikvah Forum, and it lists the return of the captives as the fourth and last priority.
Netanyahu’s official X account released footage of him reading the letter, with the words “For their sake, for our sake, for the sake of our lives – we continue until the end.”
While the Hostage and Missing Families Forum was sidelined, the astro-turfed Heroism Forum held separate in-person meetings with Netanyahu and UN ambassador Gilad Erdan, who promised to advance their cause in international bodies, opposition leader Yair Lapid, and Shas party head Aryeh Deri.
Two days later, Netanyhahu published an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal, listing his three main goals of the war. The issue of the captives was not mentioned.
Nonetheless, Benjamin and Sara Netanyahu once again met with representatives of the hostage families in the defense ministry, telling them that “there is progress,” and describing the negotiations as “tug of war”, ultimately repeating the standard line that “the military pressure is working.”
During the meeting, however, Hamas published a statement reiterating its demand for a permanent ceasefire and withdrawal from Gaza before any talks can begin, discrediting the claims Netanyahu was telling the families.
In a December 28 meeting with Shahar Mor Munder and representatives of 5 other families of captives, MK Avi Dichter, who is also a member of Netanyahu’s war cabinet and previously boasted that Israel is “rolling out the Nakba of Gaza”, reiterated that military force was the only way to release the hostages. Mor Munder described the meeting as “fruitless.”
As time goes on, The Hostage and Missing Families Forum has become less confrontational against Netanyahu in its approach, instead organizing art installations, bike rides in addition to weekly vigils. At a December 30 vigil, neoconservative former US ambassador Dennis Ross called on Qatar to demand Hamas release the captives, echoing the same talking points Netanyahu gave the families in their first meeting in October.
“Qatar cannot simply be a messenger. It has to put pressure on Hamas. It's not enough to simply help negotiate. Hamas must understand that if it does not respond to Qatar, it risks the relationship with it,” Ross advised.
The organization also promoted a prayer rally at the Western Wall for the success of the soldiers and the return of the hostages, featuring Rabbi Shmuel Eliyahu, who preached against a captive exchange, and whose sons are key figures in the Tikvah Forum.
On January 2, Netanyahu once again called a meeting with the families, forcing them to hand over their phones ahead of time. Sara Netanyahu told the families that speaking out strengthened the position of Hamas, angering the families and forcing Benjamin Netanyahu to intervene. Netanyahu assured them Hamas was warming to the Israeli proposal to guarantee its leadership safe passage out of Gaza in exchange for the captives, despite Hamas’ consistent position that there would be no release without a permanent ceasefire.
During the meeting, an Israeli drone strike assassinated Hamas deputy political head Saleh al-Arouri in the Dahiya neighborhood of Beirut, who was a key figure in negotiations for a captive exchange, which were then called off. The families, left without their phones, only found out about the assassination afterwards.
As Netanyahu wages a devastating war against Gaza and deceives the families of captives while The Hostage and Missing Families Forum avoids confronting him, time ticks away, and the fate of the 136 remaining captives hangs in the balance.
Some of the Israelis are waking up to the same style of psychological warfare directed at them, that their government has been instigating against the Palestinians for decades. The tactics of the Netanyahu regime should be very familiar to most people in Middle East and West by now. We see these types of lies all the time.
This will end badly for many people, but Netanyahu and his wife may get a Nicolai Ceaușescus style ending if they lose their propaganda campaigns.
What can the civilised world do Dan? What do you suggest?