Margalit Moses, who was held hostage in Gaza and released in November, said on Thursday that she would not attend a Friday meeting with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that she was invited to along with other released hostages.
“Thank you for the invitation, but I will not take part in a meeting for the sake of a photograph and public relations while my friends are suffering in Hamas’s tunnels in Gaza,” Moses, 78, wrote in a reply to Netanyahu, Ynet reported.
“I saw them alive in captivity with my own eyes, and now, because of the continued neglect since October 7, we’re getting them back in caskets,” she said.
Moses’s response comes after the IDF recovered the bodies of hostages Alex Dancyg, 75, Yagev Buchshtav, 35, Chaim Peri, 79, Yoram Metzger, 80, Nadav Popplewell, 51, and Avraham Munder, 78, on Tuesday.
The IDF confirmed on Thursday that autopsies of all six hostages showed signs that they had been killed by gunshots.
Moses added that her rejection of the invitation came in light of reports that the prime minister was trying to sabotage a deal to get hostages back in exchange for a ceasefire and releasing Palestinian prisoners from Israeli prisons.
“I see no reason to go to a meeting with the person who proves with his actions that releasing the hostages is not at the top of his priorities and is abandoning them to die,” Moses wrote, adding that she would be happy to meet with Netanyahu “at a reception event for the 109 hostages when they return to their families.”
Moses’s ex-husband, Gadi, is still being held captive in Gaza.
Negotiations for a hostage deal have failed for months as both sides accuse each other of sabotaging talks and not cooperating in the process. Netanyahu has also been accused by members of the Israeli negotiating team of trying to blow up the talks with changing demands regarding Israeli forces remaining on the Philadelphi and Netzarim corridors in Gaza.
According to Ynet, the meeting will be attended by nine released hostages who still have relatives being held captive in Gaza: Yelena Trufanov, mother of Sasha Trufanov; Ilana Gritzewsky, partner of Matan Zangauker; Raz and Ella Ben Ami, wife and daughter of Ohad Ben Ami; Aviva and Shir Sigal, wife and daughter of Keith Sigal; Yocheved Lifshitz, wife of Oded Lifshitz; and Adi Shoham, wife of Tal Shoham.
The group is scheduled to give a statement to the media at 1 p.m. following the meeting.
Moses was taken hostage by Hamas on October 7 along with 250 people. She told Channel 12 News that she was initially held in a tunnel along with Yocheved and Nurit Cooper, who were also released, Amiram Cooper, whose body is still being held in Gaza, and Munder.
Moses said terrorists took her oxygen tank when they got to Gaza, leading her to be unable to sleep the whole time she was in captivity.
On her second day of captivity, Moses said she met Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar who she described as “arrogant.”
It is believed that 105 of the 251 hostages abducted by Hamas on October 7 remain in Gaza, including the bodies of 34 confirmed dead by the IDF.
Hamas released 105 civilians during a weeklong truce in late November, and four hostages were released before that. Seven hostages have been rescued by troops alive, and the bodies of 30 hostages have also been recovered, including three mistakenly killed by the military as they tried to escape their captors.
Hamas is also holding two Israeli civilians who entered the Strip in 2014 and 2015, as well as the bodies of two IDF soldiers who were killed in 2014.