
During a tense meeting on Tuesday with the bereaved families of observation soldiers slain by Hamas on October 7, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu claimed he did not know that the soldiers had expressed concerns that the terror group was readying an attack.
He also claimed not to have known that the surveillance soldiers at the base on the Gaza border, all women, were unarmed. And he said he had no idea that many bereaved families had not been paid condolence visits by government ministers or Knesset members.
During the three-hour meeting, a recording of which was aired by Channel 12 news, the relatives sharply criticized the premier for not accepting responsibility for the devastating Hamas-led massacre.
The session at the Prime Minister’s Office in Jerusalem started on a testy note, with the premier wishing the participants a “good morning,” to which one of the slain soldiers’ relatives replied, “It’s not a good morning for us.”
- “We’re from the same family,” Netanyahu responded, to which the relative responded, “It’s too bad it doesn’t feel like it.”
Fifteen surveillance soldiers were killed and six were taken hostage from the IDF’s Nahal Oz base on October 7. In total, 66 troops were killed in the assault on the base, part of the massive Hamas-led onslaught in southern Israel in which 1,200 people were killed and 251 were kidnapped.
In an exchange heard in the recording, one of the relatives said that many of the observation soldiers had warned of a pending attack prior to October 7.
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Another participant in the meeting said, “[My daughter] just finished her on-job training. She started her stint as an observation soldier just the week before. She came home and told us, ‘Mom… there’s going to be an invasion.’”
The premier sounded shocked by the revelations — despite similar stories being published in Hebrew media multiple times in the months since the massacre — asking, “When did she tell you?”
- “She told us this while she was there, she even said it a few times,” the relative replied.
- A different participant in the meeting told the premier, “For a month they told us every day: ‘There is chaos… they’re training [in Gaza].”
Netanyahu, who has sought to deflect responsibility for the October 7 attack, listened to the family members’ stories during the gathering and focused his responses on the military failures leading up to the massacre.
- “All this information — it’s astonishing to me that I’m hearing this. I didn’t know they told you this… All this information, it needed to reach someplace… that didn’t happen. This means the intelligence…”
- “Guys, listen, I heard you, listen to me,” the prime minister said as the participants began to speak over him.
In another exchange, Netanyahu said he’d had no idea until Tuesday that the female surveillance soldiers at the base on the Gaza border did not have guns — a failing that has been widely reported and discussed since October 7. [They were issued weapons only when taking shifts on guard duty.]
- “I just asked Roman (Gofman, his military secretary), ‘Were there weapons? They didn’t have guns?’ Just now. An hour and a half ago… He said: ‘No.’ I said: ‘How can that be?’
- A participant in the meeting responded: “Are you trying to tell me you didn’t know they didn’t have guns?”
During the meeting, the bereaved family members pushed for the formation of a state commission of inquiry to investigate the Hamas-led October 7 onslaught and the Israeli failures surrounding it.
- One of the participants said, “Our lives were turned upside down. The only thing we’re asking is that first of all the truth comes out. I want there to be a state commission of inquiry — we all want [one].”
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Another participant in the meeting could be heard asking Netanyahu to promise that an inquiry will be formed soon, “not in another 20 years.”
- Addressing the prime minister’s repeated claim that an investigation determining the culpability of the government cannot take place while the war in Gaza is ongoing, a bereaved mother said, “It won’t disturb the war. We are Likudniks who voted for you — there are two Bibists [Netanyahu supporters] sitting across from you.”
Netanyahu has been noncommittal on establishing a state commission — the investigatory body with the greatest powers — indicating that other formats may be more appropriate.
- Another participant chimed in, echoing slogans chanted at anti-government protests in recent months, “You’re the leader, you’re responsible. You’re the commander of the army! You command the defense minister, the responsibility is on you. Take responsibility.”
- Again, the prime minister insisted: “At this time, I’m telling you, we need to do all the examinations and all that, but to get into that now, so all the officers will get lawyers? We’re in an existential war,” he said.
Last week, Defense Minister Yoav Gallant called for the formation of an official probe into the failures surrounding the October 7 onslaught, saying it could not wait any longer and arguing that it should be all-encompassing.
- As the tense meeting continued, one mother said, “Everyone talked about punishments,” while another recalled that the observation soldiers were told they could be sentenced to 28 days in military prison “if they looked away from the surveillance screens for a moment by mistake.”
- “What’s the punishment for looking away when it resulted in a cost of 1,400 murdered and the dearest price to us?” the participant added.
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“I want to know what punishment they’ll receive because if my sister looked away she’d go to jail. What’s the punishment for those who looked away for so many years?”
The participants in the meeting complained that they had been ignored by the government, another claim repeatedly covered in the media since October 7.
- “I’ve been sitting at home for nine months. No one has come to us — not from the government or the Knesset… instead of saying, ‘Guys, we’re aware of you, of your existence,’” one participant said, while another added, “No one can come to our home? Nine months, they couldn’t knock on the door, [say,] ‘We made a mistake,’ ask for forgiveness?”
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Again, the prime minister pleaded ignorance: “I would like to apologize because I didn’t know they didn’t visit you… I don’t know why. We’ll also check that. I go when there’s someone I know personally. I’m sorry I couldn’t come, I would’ve come to you all.”
- One of the participants retorted, “You know Noa Argamani, right? Of the girls you know here, you went to visit her, right?”
Netanyahu has drawn criticism for visiting four hostages rescued from terrorist captivity in the Gaza Strip — including Argamani, who was freed by the IDF along with three other hostages last month — while not making similar trips in the past to visit the families of hostages who died in captivity or of people who were killed on October 7.
During the meeting, Netanyahu also told the participants that the Hamas invasion was intended to be just one part of an Iranian plan for a multi-front ground invasion aimed at destroying Israel completely.
Hamas’s Gaza leader Yahya Sinwar, said Netanyahu, began that effort earlier than Iran wanted. But the Iranian plan, he indicated, is still in place.
- “We discovered in the course of the [IDF] operation in Gaza that Sinwar simply opened fire too early — that Iran is planning to put us in a stranglehold of its proxies, to invade us from Gaza, Lebanon, Judea and Samaria, Jordan.
- “Simultaneous ground invasions and massive missile fire. Hundreds of thousands of missiles rockets, drones,” he said.
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“And [attacks] from Iran itself, which it already fired,” he added, alluding to Iran’s direct attack on Israel with hundreds of missiles and drones in April.
- “The plan is not to wipe out Israel as an idea — [but] to destroy the State of Israel, to conquer the State of Israel.”
The recording from the meeting was aired soon after the families of five surveillance soldiers kidnapped from the Nahal Oz base released images from the women’s first days in captivity in Gaza.
The five are among the 116 hostages abducted by Hamas on October 7 believed to remain in Gaza — including the bodies of 42 whose deaths the IDF has confirmed — after 105 civilians were released from Hamas captivity during a weeklong truce in late November, and four hostages were released prior to that. Seven hostages have been rescued by troops alive, and the bodies of 19 hostages have also been recovered, including three mistakenly killed by the military.
One more person is listed as missing since October 7, and their fate is still unknown.
Hamas is also holding two Israeli civilians who entered the Strip in 2014 and 2015, as well as the bodies of two IDF soldiers who were killed in 2014.
Source: TOI
Mossad chief said to tell cabinet female hostages don’t have any more time
Mossad chief David Barnea reportedly told the cabinet meeting yesterday that the female hostages don’t have any time left to wait for a new hostage deal framework, Hebrew media reports.
- “The girls in captivity don’t have time to wait for changes in the proposal under discussion,” several Hebrew sites quotes Barnea as saying in the closed-door meeting.
Barnea’s comments come amid reports Netanyahu wants to make changes to the deal currently on the table.
The Walla news site says Barnea received support from two of the female ministers.
- “It’s an open wound in society. We are obligated to the public and to the citizens who were not protected by the IDF and Shin Bet on October 7,” says Transportation Minister Miri Regev according to Walla.
- “Women can give birth after nine months and that is a disaster that you cannot recover from,” Walla quotes Intelligence Minister Gila Gamliel as saying in a reference to concerns the female hostages my have been sexually assaulted in captivity.
Source: TOI