The news of the release of the director of Shifa hospital is not getting through in Israel.
On the government’s WhatsApp group, ministers are surprised by this decision and are asking for explanations. For example, Minister Amihai Chikli wrote: “Yoav Gallant, can we have some explanations? Why is this man being released when hostages were murdered in his hospital and there was a Hamas command post?”
Ben Gvir: “It is time for the leader of Shabak to be fired. He does what he wants and Gallant with him. He totally ignores the cabinet and the government. He leads an independent policy. He does what he wants and during the debates he becomes a defender of the conditions of detention of terrorists. Are they cramped? He cares about their conditions.”
Shlomo Karhi: “Israel needs new security leadership, from top to bottom. Leadership that will be committed to winning and that will be faithful to the bravery of the fighters as is the Prime Minister. The earliest would be best”.
Yossi Fuchs: “How could such a decision be taken without bringing together the government? If for an agreement on the release of hostages, you asked for everyone’s agreement, even more so for the release of terrorists without compensation!”
Orit Struck: “Serious question: by what right was this decision made?”
Defense Minister Yoav Gallant’s office said the minister was not aware of the decision to release the Shifa hospital director, as the matter is the responsibility of the IDF. Gallant’s entourage said they understood the anger over the decision.
In the ranks of the opposition, Avigdor Liberman denounced: “We discovered that the director of the Shifa hospital is not a doctor, it is Doctor Mengele. The decision to release him is a moral, security and ethical abandonment.”
The hostages’ families also expressed their dissatisfaction: “The decision to release him is a moral shame, the continuation of the pre-Simchat Torah conception and a spit in the face of the hostages’ families.”
Avi Marciano, the father of Noa, z’l, kidnapped on October 7 and murdered on the grounds of Shifa hospital, declared: “Sorry, my daughter, we continue to neglect you. Seven months after your burial, the State of Israel decided to release the person who is directly or indirectly responsible for your assassination. I am only prepared to accept the release of the person who was complicit in the murder of my daughter as part of an agreement to release the hostages. Not that way.”
Security officials said that the decision to release the director of the Shifa hospital as well as 50 other terrorists was linked to the lack of space in prisons, a subject on which debates have been taking place for months with Minister Ben Gvir. They claim that instead of giving them more space, Ben Gvir persists in wanting their incarceration to be taken care of by the IDF.
Minister Ben Gvir defends himself: “Since the beginning of the war, we have built 1,500 detention places, we have opened tents with another 1,000 places and now we are building another ten departments in the prisons. But in Sde Teman, there are 1,500 empty detention places run by the IDF and the Shabak refuses to imprison terrorists there because the conditions there are bad.”
