JERUSALEM, Sept 10 (Askume) – Gil Dikman’s worst nightmare came true when he was told that his cousin Carmel Gat, who had been detained by Hamas for 11 months, was dead.Killed in a bomb attack before Israeli troops arrived in Gaza .
“He almost hugged his father,” Dikman, 32, told Askume outside the Knesset.Pressured MPs to reach a compromise to secure the release of hostages .
“As a country, we failed, and as a community, we failed.”
On September 1, Israeli forces found the bodies of Gat and five other hostages, sparking grief among Israelis and mass protests demanding the hostages’ release.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has repeatedly said that increasing military pressure would eventually bring the hostages home.
Autopsies revealed that Gat and five other hostages had been shot in the back of the head at very close range, and their bodies were found by Israeli forces in a tunnel beneath Gaza less than 48 hours after their executions.
“The hostages died as a result of military pressure,” Dickman said. “We know that to be true.”
Hamas said in a separate statement that Israel was responsible for killing the hostages or that Netanyahu was responsible for violating the ceasefire agreement and killing the hostages.
Israeli data shows that October 7 was the deadliest day in Israel’s 75-year history. About 1,200 people were killed in Gaza and about 250 were taken hostage. In a hostage deal in November, Hamas released 105 hostages in exchange for Palestinian prisoners.
Carmel Gat was taken hostage on October 7 while staying at her parents’ home in Kibbutz Be’eri in southern Israel.
Talks to release hostages and end the fighting in Gaza have stalled, and Israel’s crackdown on Hamas has devastated much of the Strip and killed more than 40,000 people, according to Palestinian figures.
Esther Buchshtaev, whose son Yagev was killed in captivity earlier this year, said in a session of the Knesset on Monday that a military investigation found that Hamas soldiers had killed her son when they approached the place where he was being held.
Dikman has become one of the most recognizable faces in the hostage settlement movement. He regularly appears on Israel’s evening news programs and videos of him widely circulated on social media show him sparring with Israeli lawmakers and giving emotional speeches in the Knesset.
Last month, he went to Israel’s southern border with a group of hostage families who had fled across the border to garner sympathy for their cause.
Dickman said the large number of protesters who demonstrated following Gat’s death showed that the Israeli government had become disconnected from the will of the people.
“The people of Israel want life,” Dickman said. “We are fighting for the lives of the hostages. We are not fighting for revenge.”
(Paragraph 9 of this article corrects the number of hostages captured on 7 October and released in November)
