Benjamin Netanyahu's military secretary on October 7, 2023, has accused the prime minister of passing up chances to bring hostages home alive in order to protect his coalition. Netanyahu rejects the claim.
Avi Gil (Screenshot, Channel 12)
Benjamin Netanyahu's military secretary on October 7, 2023, has accused the prime minister of passing up chances to bring hostages home alive in order to protect his coalition. Netanyahu rejects the claim.
Avi Gil, who held the post from July 2021 to May 2024, made the allegations in a Channel 12 interview on Thursday. Asked whether hostages died in captivity when they could have been returned earlier, he said: "They could have come back before." Pressed on whether Netanyahu chose his government and his political survival over their lives, he replied: "Factually, that is exactly what happened." He added that "political considerations are also part of the matter" in running a country.
Gil said Netanyahu sometimes bent to far-right ministers who opposed hostage deals and ceasefires. Of the 251 people taken hostage that day, 46 were abducted alive and died in captivity. Asked whether some could have been saved, Gil said: "We could have."
He also accused Netanyahu's chief of staff, Tzachi Braverman, of tampering with phone records from the morning of the attack. He said the prime minister's account of the lead-up, including his submission to the state comptroller, omits key details, and that security chiefs repeatedly warned of coming war, though not of the specific scenario that unfolded.
Netanyahu said the interview was "an attempt to obscure the simple and painful truth about his failure." Gadi Eisenkot called for a criminal inquiry, and Avigdor Liberman accused Netanyahu of treason. The claims come less than three weeks before Israel's first election since the attack.
Dodging the broken glass carpeting her home in southern Lebanon, Mariam al-Yaghi exited onto her upper balcony and pointed. A few hundred metres away was a sight the 67-year-old had grown accustomed to: military vehicles moving through the adjacent Lebanese village, still occupied by Israeli troops.
New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani was booed on Wednesday night at a candlelight vigil in Union Square marking three years since the Oct. 7 attack, the New York Post reports.
Britain said on Thursday its nearly 200-year-old consulate in Jerusalem would remain operating at a smaller scale, renamed as the "UK Mission" in the city, after Israel ordered it shut in a dispute over sanctions on settlements.
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