Former hostage Gadi Mozes said angrily that the government abandoned him on October 7, and afterwards, by not taking responsibility and by not instituting a state commission of inquiry, at Nir Oz, in a Friday interview with N12.
“What is this? They abandoned us. Are we not citizens? Have we not lived here for 70 years? Have we not lost friends at Ammunition Hill, in crossing the canal, and in taking the Golan Heights? Not one minister called me and said, ‘Welcome back,’” N12 quoted the 81-year-old as saying.
“Thirty-four ministers, as if I care. It shows me what kind of people they are. Am I not a citizen of the state? Am I second class? The president called the next day, he warmed my heart,” he continued.
Mozes recalled that the German Ambassador to Israel Steffen Seibert, visited him in the hospital and sat with him for an hour and a half, speaking both in Hebrew and English; however, nobody from Israel’s government did the same. “What, nothing happened to me?”
Mozes pushed for a state commission of inquiry to “investigate everything that happened that morning.”
Mozes pushes for state commission on October 7
He alleged, however, that the government does not want to investigate “the truth, or that they want to investigate the truth as it appears through their special glasses.”
“We, as a people, need this report. It needs to be purely an analysis of what happened. So that these people will know what happened to it, how it happened, and as a result, what needs to be done so that something like this does not happen again.
“No one can explain rationally how this happened and why it happened. How such a complete system's collapse occurred all along the chain of command and the politics,” he said.
“Because what do they say? The army is subordinate to the government, but no one woke me up at six in the morning to tell me what to do. Because on the side of power, there is also responsibility. It is like on Yom Kippur, they blamed only the army, as if the civilian leadership was not involved at all, it was not part of it,” Moses added.
Mozes credited former military chief Herzi Halevi for taking responsibility for the military’s absence on October 7. “He told me, ‘I ask forgiveness, I apologize, and I take all the responsibility upon myself.’ But he is the army commander; he also had a commander, and that commander is not here.”
Mozes stressed that he wants answers. “Why did all this happen?”
Mozes moved back to Kibbutz Nir Oz in October
Mozes, who moved back to Nir Oz in October, said that his strongest motivation was "seeing all the farmers of the area standing and cheering for me on the road, from the Gama junction all the way to the base in Re'im.”
On a tour of the kibbutz, Mozes showed the houses being demolished to make room for new homes, a decision Mozes supports. “There is also something about building a vibrant community and not living in a cemetery,” he says. “We need to live in a place where children can run around. We will take some of the burned houses, place them elsewhere, and make a memorial site.”
On October 7, Mozes was taken captive from his home in Nir Oz. His longtime partner, Efrat Katz, was killed. Her daughter and two grandchildren were also taken hostage, and released in the November 2023 ceasefire, as was Moses’ ex-wife. He spent a total of 482 days in captivity.