Einav Zangauker, whose son Matan was held hostage in Gaza and later freed, published a scathing statement Tuesday reflecting on one of the most difficult periods of her campaign to bring the captives home. In her post, she directly blamed Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his advisers for what she described as prioritizing political considerations over the opportunity to secure the hostages' release.
Describing the day she received devastating news, Zangauker wrote: "It was one of the hardest days in the struggle and one of the most difficult we've known since the cursed day of October 7th. Rumors were flying everywhere, an entire country entered a state of anxiety, and then came the news that shattered me."
She spoke of the deep connection she had formed with other hostage families: "These dear families whose worlds were destroyed had become family to me. Their pain still tears my heart apart to this day."
Zangauker then leveled sharp accusations at decision-makers: "They could have been saved. But they abandoned and sacrificed these special children on the altar of politics and personal considerations. It was more important to sell the public the Philadelphi spin as the bedrock of our existence than to bring them back." [The Philadelphi Corridor is a narrow strip along Gaza's border with Egypt that became a contentious issue in hostage negotiations.]
"The pictures of them in the tunnels of death still show how much light they had in them and how much darkness there is in those who voted again and again against their release," she added.
Zangauker also claimed: "And of course one cannot ignore that at exactly those moments, Netanyahu's advisers were leaking materials to Bild that harm Israel's security in order to influence public opinion and damage our struggle to get the children back ... A thousand circles of hell will not be able to cleanse the souls of the people who did this, from the prime minister down through his entire team."
