A woman kidnapped during Hamas’s onslaught of October 7, 2023, and who was later freed, recently recounted sexual abuse she underwent in captivity and tried to persuade far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir to back a potential deal to return the remaining 100 abductees, but he pointedly refused, claimed he had no responsibility for the attack, and criticized her for interrupting him, according to a recording of the meeting published Sunday on Channel 12 news.

In a heated and emotional exchange that apparently took place last Wednesday, the former hostage, who was released from Hamas captivity during the November truce last year, pled with Ben Gvir to support a deal even at the cost of ending the 14-month-long war, asserting that female hostages are being raped every day.

In the recording, the released hostage — who was identified only by her Hebrew initial, Dalet, and whose voice was altered to protect her privacy — tells Ben Gvir that he is personally responsible for hostages being raped and killed, while the minister denies responsibility — repeatedly blaming the military and security establishment — and reiterates his position that the war should go on indefinitely and that a deal to end it and release Palestinian security prisoners would result in “tens of thousands of girls being raped” in the future.

The woman told Channel 12 that after the meeting, “I felt drained and hopeless in the face of the minister’s dismissive response.”

She said Ben Gvir promised her during the meeting that he would publish a post condemning attacks on hostages’ families and former captives, a post that was yet to be published as of Monday morning.

Ben Gvir, who as national security minister is in charge of the Israel police, has consistently opposed any hostage deal throughout the war, and was the only security cabinet member to vote against the temporary truce in November 2023 that saw the release of 105 civilian hostages out of the 251 Hamas took in its devastating cross-border attack, in which some 1,200 were killed.

Ben Gvir has advocated for military pressure in order to coerce Hamas to free the remaining hostages, including cutting off all aid to Gaza, permanently staying in the Strip, reestablishing settlements there and encouraging the Palestinian population to emigrate.

At the start of the edited recording of the meeting, Ben Gvir asks Dalet how she is doing, to which she responds: “I have no life. I haven’t even managed to rehabilitate myself. I’m woken up by nightmares, woken up by memories of how they beat me, abused me, touched me.”

She then describes what she says is the likely situation of the remaining female hostages: “[The captors] are raping them. Our girls are being raped day and night. I went through sexual abuse and I know that they are being raped.”

When Ben Gvir asks what her captors did to her, Dalet responds: “They touched all over my body, every part of my body. The only thing that saved me was that I was on my period.”

When Dalet asks Ben Gvir, “Is that what you want them to be doing to girls? Continuing to rape them?” the national security minister responds that “the alternative is that they rape tens of thousands of girls,” suggesting that a deal that keeps Hamas in power, and involves the release of thousands of Palestinian security prisoners, including terror convicts, would open the door to more October 7-style attacks in the future.

“They’re raping them right now!” Dalet responds, agitated. “They’re raping them right now. They’re raping them right now.”

“You failed on October 7, now you need to return them and make sure there won’t be another failure like that again,” she then charges. “You failed in that they were kidnapped, you failed in that they’re still there after 432 days, you failed in that they touched me, you failed in that they destroyed my life, you failed in that I needed to quit my job and have nothing left in my life.”

“Do you know what I’m responsible for?” Ben Gvir says, going on to apparently address other people who were present: “You didn’t prepare her for the meeting?”

He then launches a lengthy defense of himself, denying that as part of the government, he had collective responsibility for the failure to prevent the October 7 massacre.

“Who screwed up? One minute… Who has planes? It was the defense minister, it was the IDF chief of staff, it was the head of the intelligence directorate… as the police minister, I don’t have planes or tanks, and I’m not the head of intelligence. I have no authority over the Gaza border fence.”

Dalet then says: “You have authority and an obligation to protect citizens in the country, and on October 7 they kidnapped me from my house inside the country.”

Ben Gvir then claims that he had suggested policy changes that would have allegedly prevented the attack, but the government didn’t accept them.

“Had they listened to me, to what I had been asking for two years — to bomb Hamas, carry out targeted assassinations — the problem is that they called me delusional and incompetent, and why was I warmongering, and Hamas was deterred, and all sorts of things.”

Later in the meeting, Dalet tells Ben Gvir: “I’m sick mentally, I’m sick physically, the hostages are languishing and dying there.”

The minister answers: “I’m just saying one thing to you — I bear responsibility. And I think if we make a reckless deal…”

“They’re raping them now!” Dalet says heatedly. “They’re raping them now! Right now, there are pregnant women! They’re raping them now!”

Ben Gvir continues to lay out his vision for Gaza and the war.

“I’ve told the prime minister what my red lines are, and by and large you know what they are too — I’m not willing to end the war, we mustn’t end this war — ever.”

Dalet: “What…”

Ben Gvir: “Let me just wrap up, you keep interrupting me all the time and I don’t know why.”

Dalet: “Now I want you to tell me you’re ready to end the war.”

Ben Gvir: “What? You’re confused. I think there has to be a war and we are obligated [to fight it] until total victory. The ones who abandoned you are the ones who didn’t want… when they told me I was crazy in the cabinet and that Hamas was deterred, and the ones who told me that from a security standpoint it wasn’t okay to request targeted assassinations.”

The minister reiterates his recommended course of action: “We occupy territory from them, we liberate territory, we encourage voluntary emigration. We have to stay there and encourage emigration, voluntarily.”

Dalet then charges: “Oh, you have to stay there, then you build houses — you want to build houses on the bodies of the hostages and roads on the bodies of the hostages.”

Ben Gvir continues, unfazed: “I think we have to stay there and encourage voluntary emigration. There are many, many people [in Gaza] who want to leave, let them leave. By the way — that would be victory. I don’t want there to be an end to the war because we have to win the war.”

Dalet retorts: “You just threaten and threaten and threaten and don’t do anything, threats — they don’t do anything, actions do something.”

Ben Gvir then appears to claim his threats to bolt the coalition are the only thing that caused Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu not to halt the war and sign a deal: “You know how I changed things? Thanks to my threats he’s continued the war, thanks to my threats…”

“People have been murdered because of military pressure,” Dalet then snaps, listing hostages who were murdered in captivity as Israeli strikes intensified in their area: “[Itay] Svirsky was murdered, [Yossi] Sharabi was murdered, Eden Yerushalmi.”

The disagreements continue and do not resolve before Ben Gvir eventually decides to end the meeting.

“Tell me, are you receiving therapy?” he asks.

Dalet answers: “Me? No, I don’t have time for that, because I have to go to meetings.”

Ben Gvir: “I recommend that… it’s a very very important thing, and if there’s something you need…”

Dalet then talks about flashbacks she has to fellow captives she left behind when she was freed: “How can I go to therapy when I go to sleep and have to look them in the eyes, and stay with them in the tunnel, imprisoned in the dark, without food, without water! How can I recover from that? And you know that every day they could die… You will return them all in bags, and then I’ll have to live with that [question of] why I’m here and they’re not — you don’t live with those thoughts!”

Ben Gvir: “I’m not willing, I don’t want to stop the war against these Nazi enemies.”

Dalet: “So you prefer that they keep raping and killing citizens who are being raped right now…”

Ben Gvir: “I prefer that they won’t rape tens of thousands of girls…”

Dalet then shouts angrily: “You’re raping them right now, right now you’re raping them and killing them, right now you’re killing and raping your citizens.”

At this point, Ben Gvir says: “We’re done here.”

Responding to the report, Ben Gvir said he “has met with dozens of families, listened to their pain, cried with them, and even so, he is not willing to endanger the wellbeing of tens of thousands of citizens of Israel, and he is not ready to free 1,000 [Yahya] Sinwars who will rape thousands of girls.”

That was a reference to the now-slain Hamas leader who masterminded the October 7 onslaught. In 2011, Sinwar was among more than 1,000 Palestinian security prisoners released in exchange for a single captive IDF soldier, Gilad Shalit, in a deal opposed by many on the right.

“The hostages must be freed by ending the supply of fuel and humanitarian aid to the enemy, occupying Gaza encouraging voluntary emigration,” Ben Gvir added in his response.