Hostage families deride Netanyahu's Congress speech

Relatives and friends of hostages packed into a public square in Tel Aviv where the speech was being screened

Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech was hailed as historic, powerful and moving by his supporters in Israel and derided as absurd and cynical by some of his critics.

Much of the nation is focused on the need to end the war in Gaza and bring home the hostages held by Hamas.

Instead, the Israeli prime minister delivered a fiery defence of Israel’s military campaign, framing it as a proxy fight against Iran that must be won at all costs.

“You placed the truth on the most important stage in the world,” tweeted Aryeh Deri, the head of Shas, which is part of Mr Netanyahu’s coalition government.

“His words represent every Israeli who wants to live in security and believes in the righteousness of Israel's fight for existence,” was the reaction of Israel Katz, the foreign minister.

“Netanyahu gave an excellent speech,” wrote columnist Shai Peron, who identifies as a religious Zionist, on the Ynet news website. “He didn't give a pass to the world, to academia, to fake wokeness. He clarified to the world this is a war between light and darkness. He reminded everyone that it is ‘us first, you later.’"

It’s the hostages in Gaza who are the first priority for their families and friends.

A former hostage and some family members travelled with Mr Netanyahu and joined the audience in the chamber, but many demonstrated against him in Washington.

Thousands of miles away in central Tel Aviv, the families and friends of those held captive gathered to watch the speech, delivered in English, projected onto a screen with Hebrew subtitles.

While it was playing, relatives of some who had died in Gaza took to a stage to berate the prime minister with cries of anguish - a jarring contrast to the standing ovations they were seeing in Congress.

“I’m again and again shocked because it’s unbelievable the level of absurdity and cynicism and hypocrisy,” said Noa Golan, who was in the crowd.

“It’s surreal being here, [it's] so clear and obvious what needs to be done, and seeing him there. Lying would be a good way to describe it.”

Her friend Ruth Bar-Shalom said she hadn’t really expected an announcement of a deal to free the hostages, but she had expected Congress to be “much wiser and to demand answers from him".

“He’s using everyone and everything, including the American Congress which is too ignorant to see the difference between a lie and the truth, between reality and the movie he’s showing them again and again and they believe," she said.

"It’s unbelievable, we’re standing here helpless. We see that, and we cannot believe that this could happen in these days.”

Although Mr Netanyahu said Israel was intensely engaged in efforts to free the hostages, he made no mention of the ceasefire agreement under negotiation. He also postponed the departure of the Israeli delegation to the next round of talks in Qatar.

Israeli officials said he wanted to first coordinate positions with US President Joe Biden. But the move reinforced a widespread conviction that the prime minister is delaying a deal to appease the ultra-right nationalists in his government.

Families of the hostages responded by demanding an urgent meeting with the negotiators, accusing him of deliberately sabotaging their chances of bringing their loved ones home.

Mr Netanyahu also made almost no mention of the tens of thousands of Palestinians killed in Israel’s sweeping military operations. And he angrily dismissed accusations by the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC) that he was starving Gaza. He said Israel had let half a million tons of food into the Strip, and blamed Hamas for stealing it.

The prime minister was “repeating the degrading propaganda and lies that he spread over the past nine months,” Hamas said in response to the speech.

“It would have been better to arrest Netanyahu as a war criminal and hand him to the International Criminal Court instead of giving him an opportunity to… cover up the mass killings and ethnic cleansing in the Gaza Strip,” it said in a statement, accusing Washington of giving Mr Netanyahu cover to “escape punishment".

Ahmad Majdalani, a member of the Palestine Liberation Organization’s (PLO) executive committee, denounced Mr Netanyahu’s description of the Gaza conflict as a civilizational war, “as if destroying the Gaza Strip… was a civilizational matter".

In an interview with Voice of Palestine, he said the applause in Congress for “every word” Mr Netanyahu uttered showed the US was a true partner in the war.

“Netanyahu knows how to talk,” wrote Amos Harel in the left-wing Haaretz paper, “especially in English, in which his eloquence is infinitely more impressive than that of all his domestic rivals.”

He said the prime minister was correct about Hamas atrocities and “inconceivable support for the massacre” on some American campuses.

“But there is little weight behind these words as long as the prime minister doesn't take responsibility for the Israeli failure on October 7, is in no hurry to bring the hostages home, and has refused for months to move forward on a detailed practical plan for the 'day after' the war in Gaza.”