Einav Zangauker, whose son Matan is being held hostage by the Palestinian terror group Hamas, said Saturday that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was using the escalation in the north to cover up a proposed deal to free captives in Gaza.
At a weekly news conference alongside a group of hostage families, Einav questioned the prime minister’s speech to the UN General Assembly when he claimed Israel was to “win”.
“How can we win if 101 hostages are still tortured and dying in death tunnels? How do we win if civilians and soldiers have been detained by the enemy for almost a year, because you decided to sacrifice them on the altar of preserving your power? »
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She called on Netanyahu to use the successes in the north to present an initiative for the return of the hostages.
The war in Gaza erupted when some 6,000 Gazans including 3,800 terrorists led by Hamas stormed southern Israel on October 7, killed more than 1,200 people, mostly civilians, kidnapped 251 hostages of all ages , and committed numerous atrocities and using sexual violence as a weapon on a large scale.
In response to this pogrom, the deadliest in the country’s history and the worst against Jews since the Holocaust, Israel, which has sworn to annihilate the Palestinian terrorist group and free the hostages, launched a sustained air operation of a ground incursion into the Gaza Strip, which began on October 27.
An estimated 97 of the 251 hostages kidnapped by Hamas on October 7 are still in Gaza, including the bodies of 33 hostages whose deaths were confirmed by the Israeli military.
Hamas released 105 civilians during a week-long truce in late November. Four captives had previously been released. Eight living hostages were rescued by soldiers and the remains of 37 hostages were recovered, including those of three Israelis who were accidentally killed by the IDF.
The Palestinian terrorist group also holds two Israeli civilians who entered the Gaza Strip in 2014 and 2015, as well as the bodies of two soldiers killed in 2014.
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