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Hamas has been holding his son Nimrod captive in Gaza for nearly a year. But Yehuda Cohen wants Americans to know that he holds Benjamin Netanyahu responsible for it.
Cohen, who has been protesting against Netanyahu since his Likud-led government failed to prevent the October 7 terror attacks in which his son and hundreds of others were taken by the Palestinian militant group, has travelled to Washington DC to be present as the Israeli leader receives a hero’s welcome before the Republican-controlled House of Representatives on Wednesday.
Netanyahu’s visit comes as Biden administration officials are continuing efforts to encourage the Israeli government and Hamas to reach a deal that would bring home the estimated 116 hostages thought to be still in captivity.
According to the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, Netanyahu’s government has been a significant obstacle to a deal that would have brought hostages home, with the prime minster reportedly intervening to “repeatedly torpedo” the talks because a deal would lead to his government’s collapse.
In an interview with The Independent ahead of the Israeli leader’s address to Congress, Cohen said Netanyahu has no regard for the lives of hostages like his son, an Israeli soldier who was captured — on video — after his tank’s brakes failed during the October 7 attack.
Cohen said that the prime minister, in his view, is responsible for both the attack itself and the failure to end the war and bring the hostages home. Netanyahu’s aim has been to remain in power regardless of the impact on the country, Cohen believes.
“He was responsible for the events. And he is now responsible for not ending it or not going for a deal for total release of all the hostages along with the ceasefire, the only way to release all the hostages in ceasefire,” he said.
While the prime minister has denied allegations that he and his government were aware of Hamas’ planning for the attack and has placed blame on Israeli Defense Forces leadership for Hamas being able to breach the massive security wall separating Israel from Gaza, Cohen doesn’t see the IDF as responsible.
Instead, he has placed blame on Netanyahu for the specific circumstances leading to his son’s capture, crediting the Likud-led government with short-changing the Israeli Defense Forces units responsible for guarding the Gaza border in favor of sending more resources to protect extremist settlers in the West Bank.
He said the “quality of equipment” that his son’s mechanized unit had to work with in the weeks before the attack was “very low” in part because Netanyahu’s government transferred resources to aid extremists who were rioting in the West Bank.
And he further accused the Israeli government of ignoring intelligence suggesting that the attacks were imminent, telling The Independent that Netanyahu’s right-wing allies had been lusting after an opportunity to reverse the Israeli pullback from Gaza and reestablish efforts to displace Palestinian residents in favor of Jewish Israeli settlements.
It’s Netanyahu’s right-wing allies that are driving the bus on prolonging the war and escalating fighting in Gaza, he said, but it’s the prime minister himself who benefits because Netanyahu wants to remain out of prison.
For years, Netanyahu has been fighting corruption and bribery charges brought against him in the Israeli courts.
Cohen said he thinks it’s those charges that have dominated the prime minister’s actions, leading Netanyahu to be driven only by a drive for “survival.”
“It’s his only agenda — no ideological agenda, no national agenda, just a personal agenda for his personal survival,” he said.
Continuing, Cohen added that Netanyahu’s single-minded obsession with remaining free is a change from the majority of his time since returning to the prime minister’s office in 2009.
Then, he said, Netanyahu embarked on a project that was focused on keeping himself at the head of Israeli politics as a sort of “king of Israel” — using what he described as a “poisoning machine” that has “split” Israeli society.
And while the Israeli leader may have had the national interest in mind at one point, Cohen said Netanyahu lost any interest in the nation when he was brought up on criminal charges four years ago.
Instead, he’s re-tooled his governing style to keep himself in office using smaller and smaller groups of extreme lawmakers, such as his Interior Minister, Itmar Ben-Gvir, and others like him.
“He’ll do anything — he’ll ruin everything — as long as he’s prime minister,” he said.
