The father of a slain hostage said Tuesday that a “senior diplomatic official” told him he could “also deal with another 200 bereaved families.”

Rabbi Elhanan Danino, whose son Ori was murdered in Hamas captivity in August 2024, revealed the remark in an interview with the Kan public broadcaster.

Using a term for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office, Danino said, “And one of the shocking sentences I heard from the aquarium is, ‘It’s possible to also deal with another 200 bereaved families.'”

When asked who made that remark, Danino replied, “What the media calls a ‘senior diplomatic official,'” a seeming reference to Netanyahu and his close circle, who often brief the press using that title.

Danino said earlier in the interview that military and security officials had “straight and pure” conversations with him about the hostages’ plight. But “when it comes to the cabinet and then the aquarium,” he said, “it gradually fades away.”

Danino’s son, an off-duty soldier with the Paratroopers’ Brigade, escaped the Nova music festival on October 7, 2023, but was captured when he returned to try to save his friends.

Danino was then held hostage for nearly 11 months before he was executed by Hamas. His body was recovered by troops on August 31 from a tunnel in southern Gaza’s Rafah along with those of Eden Yerushalmi, Carmel Gat, Hersh Goldberg-Polin, Alex Lobanov and Almog Sarusi.

The recording was published a day after three Israeli soldiers were killed in a tank in northern Gaza, bringing Israel’s toll in the ground offensive against Hamas in Gaza and military operations along the border, to 454.

Netanyahu’s government is negotiating for a ceasefire and hostage release deal with Hamas in Qatar, though talks reportedly have yet to reach a breakthrough. The government has also weighed creating a controversial “humanitarian city” in southern Gaza where hundreds of thousands of Palestinians could be confined.

Opposition lawmakers shared the clip of Danino’s interview, with Yesh Atid MK Merav Ben-Ari calling him a “dear friend” and “courageous man.” Yair Golan, chairman of the Democrats, posted that a “diplomatic source” was “the prime minister and his inner circle.”

He added, “We can’t deal with another 200 bereaved families; we need to end the war now.”

Danino has clashed with Netanyahu before. In September 2024, a recording was published of a tense and angry conversation between the prime minister and the bereaved father when Netanyahu visited the Daninos’ Shiva for Ori.

In that conversation, Danino accused the prime minister of engaging in “petty and cheap politics,” of emboldening Hamas while in power and of sowing division in Israel.

He told Netanyahu that “everything happened on your watch. My son was murdered in a tunnel that you built on your watch.”

Netanyahu responded, “Elhanan, I could respond to you, but it’s better that I don’t.”