‘Netanyahu is giving Hamas a massive victory if he sacrifices the lives of Israeli hostages’: Furious Israeli whose cousin was kidnapped slams Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as he refuses to commit to Gaza truce.
Carmel Gat was taken by Hamas as she visited her parents on October 7
Her family has not heard from her in months.
Her cousin says Israel is handing a victory to Hamas by not bringing her home
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The cousin of a student who was kidnapped by Hamas on October 7 has slammed Israel’s prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu for refusing to commit to a deal that would bring back the remaining 130 hostages, claiming he is handing Hamas a ‘massive victory’ if he ‘sacrifices’ them for a military victory.
Gil Dickmann, 31, has been working with the Hostage and Missing Families Forum to lobby Israeli politicians into bringing his cousin Carmel Gat, and the other hostages taken by Hamas on October 7, home.
Carmel, a 39-year-old occupational therapist-in-training, was last reported to have been doing yoga with other hostages underneath Gaza in an effort to keep morale up.
She was visiting her parents in Kibbutz Be’eri when Hamas attacked, and was taken with her brother, Alon, sister-in-law Yarden Roman-Gat and niece, Geffen.
While Alon and Geffen were taken, they managed to escape their captors on October 7. Yarden, meanwhile, was freed on November 29 as part of a temporary ceasefire deal. Carmel has been stuck underneath Gaza since October 7, and her family have not been given any information about her wellbeing.
Gil, a student who dropped his Master’s degree in psychology to focus on his work with the hostages’ forum, told MailOnline he is furious with the Israeli government’s refusal to prioritise the return of hostages, and said that Israel was handing a victory to Yahya Sinwar and the rest of Hamas by focusing solely on the military operation in Gaza, which has so far killed 28,985 people, mostly women and children, according to the Hamas-run health ministry.
Netanyahu has consistently refused to sign off on a ceasefire deal, and told reporters on Saturday night that his government would only approve a deal with Hamas, who are believed to be keeping the hostages somewhere underground in the Gaza Strip, if the terror group dropped it’s ‘delusional demands.’
‘Until this moment, until this very moment, Hamas’s demands are delusional. They mean only one thing: defeat for Israel’, Netanyahu said.
‘Of course, we will not agree to them. But when Hamas drops these delusional demands we can move forward,’ he added.
Behind the scenes, mediator Qatar has admitted that talks to agree to a ceasefire were ‘not very promising.’
Carmel has been stuck underneath Gaza since October 7, and her family have not been given any information about her wellbeing.
Gil said: ‘I can’t believe that Israel is not able to win and to make sure Hamas doesn’t exist anymore, and that the only way to make it go away is at the expense of the hostages. This is unbelievable to me.’
He admitted he is worried that Israel’s current focus of destroying Hamas at the expense of the lives of hostages has permanently altered Israeli society for the worse.
‘Some people really want revenge for what happened on October 7th and to make sure that this doesn’t happen again right now and want to destroy Hamas.
‘Things sometimes can get in the way of each other, and sometimes politicians don’t want to take tough decisions and don’t want to pay the political price for them.
‘The thing that we fear the most is that Israel has changed from a society that puts life above anything else.
‘[In Hebrew], we say ‘Am Yisrael Chai’, meaning “the people of Israel are alive”.
‘To choose life is very important in both Israeli society and in Judaism. Now, knowing that Israel might choose to knowingly sacrifice lives of people, deciding to let them stay in captivity and die there… it’s something I don’t want to see happening, but I understand that it’s possible.
‘In a way, they already decided to sacrifice the lives of some of the hostages. I think that… would change the very core of Israeli society from a society that believes in life to a society that sacrifices lives just like Hamas.
‘It would be a massive victory for Yahya Sinwar if he turns Israel into a society that sacrifices the lives of civilians.’
He said he was worried distrust in the government would increase if it did not prioritise the return of the hostages as soon as possible.
‘Most Israelis will agree with me and understand that the most important thing is to save the lives of [hostages] right now, because if Israel doesn’t… it’s not the kind of society that we want to become.
‘Most people understand that a government that sacrifices hostages might sacrifice them at the end of the day. That’s why I think people support us, and they know that it could have been them, and they know that it will be them if we don’t do the right thing.’
Gil told MailOnline that Netanyahu and his war cabinet did not make bringing back the hostages taken on Black Saturday a priority from the get-go, which has had a devastating effect in the four months since.
In the immediate aftermath of the October 7, Netanyahu outlined five goals for Israel’s retaliation against Hamas. The leader wanted to retake Israeli border communities that had been overrun by Hamas on October 7, begin an offensive against Hamas in Gaza, beef up security on Israel’s hostile borders, preserve international support for Israel, and bolster solidarity within Israel.
Netanyahu said at the time: ‘Our polarisation is over. When we are united, we win.’
‘None of these goals was returning the hostages home’, Gil pointed out.
He said it took concerted effort to bring the hostages’ return into the conversation.
‘In a way, I understand it. Some people didn’t want us to talk about it, and didn’t want people to know that there were hostages and that their lives were at risk.
‘I think it changed really quickly when we started the campaign and we started talking about bringing them home all over the world and then Israel couldn’t just put it aside and not talk about the hostages.’
Asked what he would personally give to get his cousin back, he said he was willing to pay ‘a very high price’, adding: ‘That’s why my whole life is paused, I haven’t worked for four months, and I don’t do anything else.’
But he said he was frustrated that Israeli leaders didn’t feel the same from the get-go.
‘On a national level, it’s a matter of priorities.[The hostages] could have been a higher priority and could have come before anything else if they’d chosen the right thing in the first few weeks.’
Gil admitted that the powerlessness he and the other family members of hostages felt was one of the main driving forces behind their work to bring them home.
‘Many people just feel like they have no power at all in this horrible situation.
The worst thing was feeling that you have no power over your life and the lives of your loved ones.
We just lost everything and [there was] nothing you [could] do about it. Bringing back the ways to control your life, to do things that can actually have an effect, that’s very important.’
But he feels like he still hasn’t done enough to bring Carmel home.
‘In a way, I feel I could have done more because she’s not yet here.’
Last night, police in Tel Aviv clashed with protesters during a demonstration calling for a hostages deal and against the Israeli government.
