Search

Mother of POW breaks down in meeting with Netanyahu

The mother of missing soldier Hadar Goldin, presumed dead, accused the prime minister of doing nothing to retrieve her son’s body.

By Batya Jerenberg, World Israel News

Leah Goldin left a meeting with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in tears Tuesday evening after accusing him of “doing nothing” for five years to retrieve her son’s body from the Hamas terrorist organization.

The meeting was held with the four families of Israelis being held for ransom in Gaza by Hamas, including the bodies of Hadar Goldin and Oron Shaul, two soldiers killed during 2014’s Operation Protective Edge, and two live young men with mental health issues who crossed the border into the enclave in 2014 and 2015 respectively — Avera Mengistu and Hisham al-Sayed.

Upon leaving the meeting only half an hour after it began, Leah Goldin, mother of Hadar, said, “The whole purpose of the meeting was to silence the families shortly before the anniversary of Operation Protective Edge.

She castigated Netanyahu, telling him, “I wonder why all of a sudden you remembered who we are, after five years during which you did nothing.”

In a follow-up statement by the family, they told the press, “Our feeling throughout the meeting was that the prime minister is doing all he can to make it through the next two weeks, during which the official commemoration will occur marking five years since the abduction of our son Hadar.”

“Even after this meeting, it’s still unclear to us why Netanyahu is not making the return of our sons a condition for any processes of rehabilitation and upgrading of Gaza that are happening every day, and if he intends to stand by his promise that returning the boys will be part of the arrangement with Gaza,” they said.

The Prime Minister’s Office responded that the government is doing “all it can” to retrieve all those captured by Hamas, and that the prime minister “understands the families’ pain.”