Yocheved Lifshitz, the freed hostage and left-wing activist, responded furiously to remarks by Itzik Bonzel, a bereaved father whose son fell in the war and who is running on the Likud list, after Bonzel said he wished she would be returned to Hamas captivity.
Lifshitz wrote on social media:
"Netanyahu sent his Likud candidate to incite against me, so people wouldn't talk about the warnings that reached him, and about the alert calls he personally received that could have prevented the disaster.
"The lies and slander won't help Netanyahu. The people of Israel understand very well that he is responsible for the disaster. He abandoned me on October 7, abandoned my husband Oded and 45 other hostages who were taken alive to die in captivity, and continues to harm security.
"There is nothing lower and more despicable than Netanyahu's method of sowing division between families of those harmed by the disaster. But I have no fear of him or of the gang of inciters around him.
"I invite the public to come this evening to the Disaster Sukkah at Hostages Square. We will not let anyone take the disaster off the agenda until we hold all those responsible to account," wrote the woman who was released under Netanyahu's government.
Hours later, Itzik Bonzel decided to walk back his statement and apologize:
"As a bereaved father who lost his son in the war to bring back the hostages, it pained me to see the harsh words that disgraced our soldiers, but in a storm of emotions I wrote a sentence about Yocheved Lifshitz in the context of Hamas that I did not mean, and I ask to apologize for it."
