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Remembering Oct. 7

Jonathan Dekel-Chen excoriates Netanyahu in Oct. 7 memorial speech

The father of hostage Sagui Dekel-Chen offered wide-ranging criticisms of political leaders across the ideological spectrum at AJC-sponsored event

Andrew Harnik/Getty Images

WASHINGTON, DC - APRIL 9: Jonathan Dekel-Chen (C), father of Sagui Dekel-Chen, one of the hostages taken by Hamas from Kibbutz Nir Oz on October 7, 2023, speaks to members of the media in front of the West Wing of the White House on April 9, 2024 in Washington, DC. Family members of hostages spoke to reporters after meeting with Vice President Kamala Harris. (Photo by Andrew Harnik/Getty Images)

Jonathan Dekel-Chen, father of American-Israeli hostage Sagui Dekel-Chen, excoriated Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in a speech on Monday at an Oct. 7 memorial event organized by the American Jewish Committee.

Dekel-Chen offered his harshest words for Netanyahu, who he said was not meaningfully pursuing the hostages’ release or Israel’s interests on the world stage. But he had no shortage of criticism for a range of constituencies including Christian Zionists, Palestinian civilians, J Street, Hamas and the international community. He even acknowledged what he said were failures by himself and other hostage families.

Dekel-Chen said that a strategy of freeing the hostages through military pressure alone is “fantastical” and “absurd.” 

“The vast majority of Israelis have been appalled by our government’s repeated moving of the goalposts in the negotiation process with Hamas,” he said. “You don’t need to believe me, the hundreds of thousands, millions of Israelis in the streets since late October are evidence of what I said.”

He suggested that the Israeli government is prioritizing “narrow political domestic interests” over the lives of the hostages.

Dekel-Chen argued that a hostage deal with Hamas — which he acknowledged would be a “deal with the devil” — is the only way for Israel and the region to move forward.

“Our world, I would say, our family, our region, our country — it all stopped on Oct. 7, and it can only resume again after all the hostages are returned, those that may still be alive and those whose bodies need to be reunited with their families,” Dekel-Chen said. “The only way to return these hostages, alive or perhaps at all, is through a negotiated agreement with Hamas, the homicidal captor of our loved ones.”

“The soul of Israel cannot survive if the hostages don’t come home,” he reiterated. “Israeli society will never recover if the hostages don’t come home.”

Dekel-Chen blasted Netanyahu’s approach to the global community, arguing that Israel cannot solely cast itself as the victim of the conflict while it conducts large-scale military attacks on Gaza. He said Netanyahu’s approach only “deepens existing anti-Israel antagonisms.”

“When our leaders claim that our critics act solely out of antisemitic motivations, they do so at least in part to deflect from Israel’s irresponsible lack of strategic vision for post-war Gaza,” he said. “In a rather childish press conference in English, or during inflammatory speeches at the U.N., directed mostly at his domestic base, Prime Minister Netanyahu only amplifies the ugliest parts of Israeli politics.”

He said the Israeli government’s recent operations against Hezbollah leaders in Lebanon may be playing into the plans of Hamas by potentially setting off a larger regional war.

Dekel-Chen described the effect of the operations — decapitating Hezbollah’s leadership and eliminating weapons stockpiles — as “worthy of praise and acceptable en route to eliminating existential threats to Israel.”

But, he said, “I do not know if a desire to deflect our country’s attention and that of the world from the stalled hostage negotiations with Hamas was a factor in Prime Minister Netanyahu’s decision to escalate the conflict with Hezbollah.”

He said that the broadening conflict had made it more difficult for the hostage families to keep attention on the hostage crisis.

Dekel-Chen also called on the Christian Zionist community in the United States to press U.S. officials and the Israeli government to secure a hostage deal, adding, “support for Israel does not always mean blind support for its government.”

At the same time, Dekel-Chen said that the Oct. 7 attack has forced “peaceniks like me and my community” to re-evaluate the potential for co-existence between Israelis and Palestinians going forward, particularly because thousands of Palestinian civilians joined the Hamas attack on Israel.

“The outcomes of Oct. 7 do mean that I can no longer speak with confidence about the basic humanity of the people of Gaza,” he said. “I can only guess where attitudes will go from here. Quite honestly I’m already disturbed by my conversations with my children about the future.”

He said he has told the progressive Israel advocacy organization J Street in recent weeks that it should “abandon, at least for now, the two-state solution as a talking point — not because I don’t believe in it, simply because it’s a nonstarter in terms of where Israeli society is today.”

Dekel-Chen called on moderate Arab countries to exert pressure on Hamas, which he said must be “forced to agree” to a deal to release the hostages, which he said is the only way to carve out a future for Palestinian civilians in Gaza.

And he called on progressive Jews to “expend at least as much effort” as they do criticizing the Israeli government on pressing Hamas “to do the right thing, despite itself, not for the good of the hostages, but for the good of the Palestinian people.”

“The madness ends in Gaza when the hostages come home, not a second before,” Dekel-Chen said.

He added that he feels one of the “great failures” by the hostage families, and potentially the AJC, has been their failure to secure humanitarian visits by the Red Cross or any international agency to the hostages.

Dekel-Chen said that the content of his speech was not what the AJC had been expecting when it invited him to address the memorial event..

“I apologize to the AJC if some of it seems perhaps a little inappropriate on this solemn day,” he said. “I believe that for a better future — not theoretically but for my own children and grandchildren — we must of course bring the hostages home and we all must look forward to a day where what’s happening within Israel can no longer be acceptable to anyone.”

Israeli Ambassador to the United States Michael Herzog offered a different message in his remarks shortly after Dekel-Chen spoke, emphasizing the need for military victory in the war and framing Israel’s operations as successful.

“We understood that if we do not prevail in this war, we will never be able to live normal life as a free nation in our homeland, and that’s why the state of Israel and the people of Israel rose to fight back,” Herzog said. “And the story of this war is also the story of how we are gradually turning the tide, restoring our deterrence, dismantling the Iranian ring of fire that they built around us, and we are weakening that axis. And with this come also opportunities amid the big, big tragedy of this war.”

He said those military operations are necessary because Iran and its allies saw the success of the Oct. 7 attack as a sign of Israeli weakness, which prompted them to escalate their attacks against the Jewish state. He linked that perception to the rise in antisemitism globally since the attack as well.

Herzog said that “without the support of the United States, we would not be able to reach the moment we reach,” and said Israel does not take that support “for granted.”

He also acknowledged the families of the hostages, saying, “it is our moral and human obligation to do our utmost to bring back home our hostages,” agreeing that Israel cannot heal until the hostages are returned home. And he described the loss of all innocent lives, including in Gaza and Lebanon, as “a tragedy.”

Second Gentleman Doug Emhoff and State Department antisemitism envoy Ambassador Deborah Lipstadt also attended the AJC event. Emhoff read a prayer while Lipstadt read the statement issued by President Joe Biden to mark the anniversary.

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