Smotrich faces backlash after claiming government with Abbas 'worse than Oct. 7 massacre'
Bennett accuses the finance minister of joining the 'list of Israel-haters and massacre deniers' as hostage survivors and bereaved families pile on
Politicians, former hostages, and families of October 7 victims launched a sharp attack Tuesday against Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich after he said that "a government with Mansour Abbas is worse than the massacre of October 7."
Former Prime Minister Naftali Bennett said Smotrich had "joined the list of Israel-haters and October 7 massacre deniers," adding that "on October 7, the heads of Israelis partying at a festival were severed. Entire families were slaughtered in their beds. Children witnessed terrorists executing their parents before their eyes." Bennett said Netanyahu, Smotrich, and their government were "trying with all their might to erase the horrors that occurred on their watch."
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Former Chief of Staff Gadi Eisenkot said Smotrich was attempting to turn "the day when Israel's borders were breached, Israeli territories were captured, citizens were slaughtered in their homes, and kidnapped alive" into a political tool. "Bezalel, you shame the public you were sent to represent," Eisenkot said, calling October 7 "the most severe failure in our history" and a "stain that will never be erased."
Captivity survivor Rom Breslavski wrote on Instagram that the events of October 7 were "not a failure, it's a betrayal — you betrayed us from within. It's murder and massacre that we underwent while you slept in your palaces." Eyal Eshel, who lost his daughter Roni, an IDF observer killed at the Nahal Oz outpost, invited Smotrich to visit her grave. "Come explain to her that she was burned to death because of a tactical failure," he wrote.
Sheli Mashal-Yogev, whose daughter Libi was murdered at the Nova party, said that "hearing live, in a phone call, how your child is being shot is not a tactical failure; it is abandonment." She also recalled Smotrich's own words on the morning of the massacre, in which he said, "Soon the magnitude of the disaster will become clear. In another 48 hours, they will call for us to resign because of the failure, and they will be right."