The father of an Israeli hostage who Hamas and Palestinian civilians took on October 7, 2023, believes that, despite his son being held captive, destroying Hamas must take precedence over saving the hostages, declaring that the goal for Israel “cannot be to bring [Hamas] to talks; it must be to destroy them.”
While the families of other hostages insist that saving the hostages must be prioritized over destroying Hamas, Tzvika Mor, the chairman of the Tikvah Forum and the father of hostage Eitan Mor — who was seized by Palestinians as he was working as a security guard at the Nova Festival — wants the IDF to pursue more aggressive actions, rather than mitigate the military response because of the hostages.
“The question isn’t what they’re going to do, but what is the goal?” he told Jewish Insider. “If the goal is to lead Hamas to negotiate, it will fail, just like in Gideon’s Chariots, which took five months and didn’t bring back the hostages and didn’t destroy Hamas. The goal cannot be to bring [Hamas] to talks; it must be to destroy them.’
“Is our war in Gaza necessary?” he asked. “If there weren’t hostages, would we still need to go to war? The answer is yes, because [Hamas] cannot remain our neighbors after we saw what they can do, or they would do it again. They are religious people; they live for this. They don’t live for a nice house and a car and social status. Not for coffee shops and pilates. They live to kill Jews. They’re like zombies. You have to destroy them. The war would be necessary even if there were no hostages. … It cannot be that we will endanger 10 million Israelis because of the hostages. We need to solve that problem such that we are not harming national security.”
He asserted that making the hostages the number one priority “not only harms national security, but it also hurts the hostages, because Hamas learns that they’re the most important to us and raises the price all the time. It’s indescribable stupidity.”
If Israel “concedes in Gaza, Hamas will never give up all of the hostages … And what would the message be to the Arabs in Judea and Samaria, that kidnapping Israelis is the best thing to do?” he asked rhetorically.
Mor ripped the Israeli media that has criticized him for his stance, saying, “The Israeli media doesn’t help. They lead the campaign” to vilify him. “But I feel that I am a messenger of the people of Israel. It is clear to me that the people of Israel want to win … They are connected to their roots, to the Land of Israel and to Judaism. They don’t want to be sold dreams and delusions that ‘it will all be OK, we can give in to terror and then deal with it later.’ We can’t ‘deal’ with it. If we surrender, we will pay a higher price.”
Mor analogized the current situation to the Biblical Abraham, who used an army to rescue his nephew Lot, who had been kidnapped by four kings. Abraham “didn’t talk to them. He didn’t pay them. He fought a war until they surrendered. That is the way,” he said, adding, “The war cannot be about the hostages, and I say that as the father of a hostage. How many soldiers should be killed for the hostages? You don’t go to war to bring back hostages. You go to war for sovereignty, for deterrence. Then, when you win, you get your captives back.”
Israel used to know that “it was clear that there was no negotiating with terrorists,” he recalled. “We would try to save our hostages and take risks, but we could not give in to terrorism.” He pointed out that the Yachin Research Center had estimated that four times more Israelis were killed in terrorist attacks between the signing of the Oslo Accords in 1993 and 2023 than in 1949-1992. “That means that since Israel gave in to terrorism, more Israelis were murdered. It’s clear … That needs to stop,” he commented.
“He is very strong, physically and mentally. He was very Zionist. He was a fighter and commander in the Golani Brigade … He’s not soft; he doesn’t whine. He is strong; he’s a leader. We are sure that if he is with other hostages, he is helping them and strengthening them,” Mor said of his son.
“Nova survivors said that Eitan left his hiding place and saved their lives, which his father said ‘tells you the most about him,’” Jewish Insider reported, as Mor added, “He could have gone home at 6:29, but he stayed to save people. He hid people and ran with them until he was kidnapped at 12:30, not by Hamas but by Gazan civilians.”