Defense Minister Israel Katz’s presentation at the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee was disrupted on Tuesday as family members of hostages called out, accusing him of deserting the hostages.
The committee was interrupted for 30 minutes while Katz and Likud MK Yuli Edelstein sat in silence.
Hannah Cohen, the aunt of hostage Inbar Haiman, who was kidnapped from the Nova music festival, screamed at Katz that he had left her daughter to die in Hamas’s hands in Gaza. “Where is [she]? Why isn’t she on the list?”
Cohen said she is a lifelong Likud member.
Multiple hostage family members said, “You have selected some hostages to live and some to die… At Auschwitz, there was selection off the train” of who would live and who would die.”
Another hostage family member screamed at Katz, “You are the marionette of Bibi!”
Cohen repeated several times, “I want to bury [her] in an Israeli cemetery.”
She continued, “You cannot continue to live here. I will not let you speak today. Go from here, and instead of speaking about money, bring her to me.”
Referring to Katz, Danny Elgarat, brother of hostage Itzik Elgarat, said, “Sitting here is a man responsible for the selection of the hostages, responsible for 70 hostages being abandoned in Gaza. He is the defense minister – where is the defense? He is the minister of abandonment. The ultra-Orthodox don’t enlist because they’re the smartest – they don’t want to be abandoned.”
Katz reiterated the government’s commitment to returning the hostages, to which Cohen responded, “Committed? How many more years? Why are you making a Schindler’s List?”
The hearing ended approximately half an hour early, at the end of which Katz hugged the family members, some of whom continued to criticize him.