Likud candidate who told captivity survivor, 'I wish there was a way to return you to Hamas,' offers apology

Likud Knesset candidate Itzik Bunzel is receiving significant backlash after writing a strongly worded post on Facebook on Monday to captivity survivor Yocheved Lifshitz. In the post Bunzel wrote, "I wish there was a way to turn the wheel back and return you to Hamas."

He was responding to comments Lifshitz made in a Channel 13 interview earlier this week. During the interview, Lifshitz, who was reacting to the Likud campaign's boast about returning the abductees from Gaza, "They didn't return a single abductee, and that's one big lie," she said. "The truth is that Miriam Adelson bought us with a hundred million dollars that she gave to Trump and told him you would return all the captives, and that's what happened."

Lifshitz added that if Netanyahu wins the upcoming elections, it will be "a disaster for this country."

Bunzel responded, stating that "the one who rescued you from the darkness of the tunnels of Gaza was not Miriam Adelson, but hundreds of heroes who went out into the inferno to bring you back alive, and some never returned." He continued: "Our sons paid with their lives and the blood of the heart of every home in Israel so that you could sit safely in your home. How pathetic, outrageous, and disconnected are your words."

Bunzel ended his explosive message saying, "hatred for Netanyahu has driven you crazy" and that "silence in the face of such abjectness is an unforgivable sin."

In response, Yocheved Lifshitz said about Bunzel, "Netanyahu sent his hand-picked candidate to incite against me so that attention would be diverted from the warnings that reached him and the specific alerts he received personally, which could have prevented this catastrophe." Lifshitz went on to say, "Netanyahu’s lies and smears won't help him; the people of Israel understand full well that he is responsible for the failure. He abandoned me on October 7th; he abandoned Oded, my husband, and 45 other hostages who were taken alive only to die in captivity; and he continues to undermine our security."

The former hostage ended her statement claiming, "I have no fear, neither of Netanyahu nor of the group of instigators surrounding him. I invite the public to come this evening to the 'Catastrophe Sukkah' at Hostages Square. We will not let anyone remove this failure from the public agenda until we hold everyone responsible to account."

Despite the initial statement, Bunzel has offered an apology, releasing one on Monday. In the statement the Likud candidate wrote, "As a bereaved father who lost his son in the war to bring back the hostages, I was pained to see the harsh things said that disparaged our fighters; however, in a storm of emotion, I wrote a sentence regarding Yocheved Lifshitz in the context of Hamas that I did not mean, and I wish to apologize for it."

Lifshitz, a resident of Kibbutz Nir Oz, was released after 17 days in captivity. Her husband's body was brought to Israel in February 2025.

Bunzel was in the news last week for a different reason. The bereaved father of Staff Sgt. Amit Bunzel, who fell in combat in the Gaza Strip, sang "Am Yisrael Chai" on Thursday evening in the UN General Assembly hall in New York as Netanyahu entered to deliver his address. "When Netanyahu entered the hall at the UN, I stood up and shouted loudly for all the nations of the world to hear: 'Am Yisrael Chai,'" he wrote. This is in contrast to the dozens of country representatives who left the chamber as the speech began.