Smotrich takes credit for return of all hostages; former captive: ‘Gaslighting propaganda’

Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich drew outrage on Sunday by claiming credit for the return of all the hostages held by terror groups in Gaza, despite having voted repeatedly throughout the two-year war in the Strip against deals that would have seen them released earlier than they ultimately were.

“I think I have a dramatic, even decisive, impact on the war,” Smotrich said in an appearance on Nadav Perry’s “All In” podcast. “I think that if not for me, the war in Gaza would have been halted even before [the operation] in Rafah,” he said, referring to the offensive launched by the IDF in the southernmost Gaza city in May 2024.

“By the way,” he continued, “unlike how some are trying to portray me as some heartless person who doesn’t care about the hostages, I think it is thanks to me that all the hostages are here.”

To explain his reasoning, Smotrich said that after all but 21 of the living hostages were released in a January 2025 deal with Hamas, another partial deal was proposed that would return another eight living hostages, leaving 12 behind.

“If in this moment I hadn’t set a red line and told [Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu that this would not happen…we would have been holding negotiations with Hamas to this day over another one, and another one, and another one,” he argued.

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Despite Smotrich’s claim, had the deal he referenced not collapsed less than two months after it began, in early March 2025, it would have eventually progressed to a second phase that would have included the release of all remaining hostages, both living and dead.

Instead, it wouldn’t be until October 2025 that the last 20 living hostages would be released — with one, a dual American-Israeli citizen, having been released separately in May as a gesture to the US — followed by the return of the bodies of the deceased. The body of the final deceased hostage, Sgt. Ran Gvili, was handed over to Israel on January 26, 2026.

In total, of the 251 hostages abducted by Hamas and other terror groups during the October 7, 2023, invasion and massacre in southern Israel, 166 were released alive, and 85 were returned to Israel deceased.

Among the bodies returned to Israel in the two years following October 7, 44 were already dead at the time they were abducted, and 41 were abducted alive and killed in captivity.

In many cases, they were murdered by their captors, and in others, the military confirmed that its own actions, including airstrikes, led to the deaths of hostages.

Smotrich consistently opposed, or gave only conditional support to, various proposals for hostage deals throughout the two-year war in Gaza, arguing that continuing the military offensive and overthrowing Hamas was more important.

He threatened, on multiple occasions, to pull his far-right Religious Zionism party from the government if a deal was signed that he disapproved of.

Among his conditions for supporting the deal that ultimately released the final hostages in October 2025 were keeping Israeli forces on the perimeter of the Strip, including along the Gaza-Egypt border, and maintaining complete freedom of action through the territory.

His remarks on Sunday, therefore, sparked anger from the released hostages and their families.

Or Levy, who was released in February 2025, accused the finance minister of spreading “gaslighting propaganda.”

“If you mean to say it is thanks to you that hostages were murdered while you torpedoed deals — then yes,” wrote Levy, whose wife, Eynav Levy, was murdered at the Nova music festival on October 7. “If it were up to you, to this day, we wouldn’t have returned.”

Asserting that the hostages were nothing more than “collateral damage” as far as Smotrich was concerned, Levy dismissed the Religious Zionism leader as “a shameful minister, a shameful citizen, and a shameful human.”

Gil Dickmann, whose cousin Carmel Gat was murdered by her captors in August 2024, lambasted Smotrich for his remarks, calling him a “vile, heartless liar.”

“Carmel was murdered because you refused to return her in time,” Dickmann wrote on X. “If bringing a woman back alive and bringing her back dead is the same in your eyes, then you truly deserve the title of ‘minister for sacrificing the hostages.'”

The Walla news outlet also reported that Smotrich was forced to cancel a planned visit to Kibbutz Be’eri on Monday due to anger from its residents over his remarks.

He had been planning to visit both Be’eri and Kibbutz Nir Oz to assess the rehabilitation efforts in the communities, which were among the hardest hit on October 7.

According to Walla, he will still visit Kibbutz Ein HaShlosha as planned.