Faced With Brutal Footage of Women Hostages, Israel's Government Responds With Shameless Arrogance

It was an agonizing decision for the families of the five young female soldiers kidnapped on October 7: Exposing their daughters' ordeal to the world by releasing a three-minute video showing them herded into trucks bloody, battered, brutalized and terrified while at the mercy of cruel and scornful kidnappers – who then, once in Gaza, displayed them like trophies of war.

The fact that the parents of these young women abducted from their army base on Kibbutz Nahal Oz were driven to take this step points to their anger and desperation in the face of the Netanyahu government's callousness when it comes to prioritizing the lives of the hostages.

The families made that clear, in a statement calling the video "an indictment for a national failure, and the abandoning of the hostages" and pushing the government to "wake up" and save their daughters – along with the other 123 hostages who have been held in captivity for 229 days.

The government "must not waste even one more moment – it must return to the negotiating table today," the statement said.

Its release followed a frustrating four-day postponement of a discussion of the hostages by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's cabinet, in a period where negotiations on a deal for their liberation are in a long-standing stalemate, with mounting evidence of foot-dragging on the part of the Israeli government.

The news broke Wednesday morning that the video recovered from Hamas fighters' body cameras, showing the brutal abduction of the spotters, would be released at 6 P.M. Along with the announcement were still photographs taken from the video, so the story remained in the headlines throughout the day.

It is shameful that families of kidnapped Israelis feel they have to resort to these tactics – just as they have resorted to civil disobedience at countless demonstrations in order to receive what should be their inalienable right: intensive and uninterrupted sympathy, attention and respect from the country's elected leaders.

Their feeling of abandonment cuts to the heart of the ethos of the Israel Defense Forces. In an unwritten contract, parents in Israel entrust their most precious assets and hopes for the future to the state. They have done so throughout Israel's history with the understanding that leaders will be careful with their children's lives – only risking them when there is no other choice, and doing anything possible to get them back if they are taken prisoner.

What the video depicts is visual evidence of the violation of that contract. The five young women in the video were not combat soldiers – they were left unarmed and vulnerable on a remote kibbutz adjacent to the Gaza border to do their job. No one was there to defend and protect them. They were not even provided with weapons to protect themselves.

The video of this first abandonment, the families hope, will make the government think twice about the second abandonment they believe is happening now: sacrificing their daughter's lives to the amorphous goal of a "total victory" in Gaza. They hope to elicit a sense of shame – as a "last resort" to appeal to the conscience of the governing authorities.

At least one senior Likud leader clearly is devoid of such shame. Foreign Minister Israel Katz chose to use the video to lash out at the European countries who announced their decision to recognize a Palestinian state.

Katz announced that during his punitive conversations with the ambassadors, he would require them to "watch a video of the brutal and cruel kidnapping of our daughters by Hamas terrorists, to emphasize the distorted decision their governments have made."

Katz, just like Netanyahu, sees the video as some kind of generous gift to be brandished outwardly as an advocacy or hasbara tool – and not as the desperate move of families hoping it would force Netanyahu and his ministers to look inwardly at their priorities and behavior over the past seven and a half months.