TEL AVIV — Three years after the deadliest day in Israel’s history, some survivors, including ex-hostages, and their families see an election later this month as a long-overdue political reckoning for the officials who were in charge when the country let down its defenses.
After Hamas attackers breached the border, and unleashed bloodshed and mayhem on Oct. 7, 2023, some people in the hardest-hit communities emerged as fierce critics of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his right-wing government, which clung to power.
“I’m terrified of these elections,” said Merav Svirsky, 45, whose parents, Orit, 70, and Rafi, 71, were killed by Hamas militants in Kibbutz Beeri, near the Gaza border, and whose 38-year-old brother, Itay, was taken hostage into Gaza, where he was killed by his captors, according to an Israel Defense Forces investigation.
She and other critics have demanded accountability for the security failures that allowed the carnage and for the prolonged ordeal of hostages that followed.
“I’m terrified that the government that brought this destruction upon us will remain in power,” Svirsky said.
“We paid the heaviest prices,” she said. “It cannot be that the person who led us into the worst massacre this country has ever seen, which cost me the lives of my family, continues to lead this nation.”
Netanyahu, who is now fighting for political survival in the Oct. 27 vote, has blamed Israel’s security chiefs for those failures, while refusing to accept personal responsibility or authorize an investigation by an independent commission.
The prime minister has argued that his leadership delivered a fierce and effective battlefield response that has reshaped the Middle East to Israel’s advantage, in Gaza, Syria, Lebanon and Iran — a view some Oct. 7 survivors also hold.
Talik Gvili, whose son, Master Sgt. Ran Gvili, was killed on Oct. 7 and whose body was held in Gaza, recently joined Netanyahu’s party to run for office and is expected to win a seat in the next Knesset, Israel’s parliament. “I want a strong leader,” Gvili said in a video announcing her candidacy.
The Hamas-led militants killed some 1,200 people and took 251 hostages on Oct. 7. For many survivors and their families that day has never quite ended.
On the morning of the attack, Adina Moshe, then 72, and her husband of 54 years, Said (David) Moshe, 75, hid in the safe room of their home on Kibbutz Nir Oz, about a mile from the Gaza Strip. Her husband, a farmer, was shot in front of her, but not before he managed to blow her a kiss, she said.
Two militants on a motorcycle then took her to a tunnel in Khan Younis, Gaza, where she was held for 49 days with a group of other hostages — most of them elderly, along with 5-year-old girl.
“It’s a pain that doesn’t leave,” Moshe said. “The moment you get into bed at night, you see what’s missing. And you see how full the darkness is.” She said she still feels guilty that not all the hostages came back alive. “They could have been saved,” she said.
In 20 days, Israelis will head to the polls in an election widely viewed as a referendum on Netanyahu, who has led Israel for nearly 19 of the past 30 years.
Most polls show former military chief Gadi Eisenkot’s party leading Netanyahu’s Likud, but neither Eisenkot’s bloc nor Netanyahu’s seems likely to win the 61 seats needed for a majority in the 120-seat Knesset.
Moshe, who is still waiting for a new house to be built on the ruins of her burned home in Nir Oz, is hoping for a change in leadership. “There is a fundamental lack of humanity in the government today,” she said. “There is no commitment to the public.”
On the day of the attack, Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich delivered a stark prediction during a cabinet meeting, according to Israeli media reports: “In another 48 hours they will call for us to resign because of the failure, and they’re right.”
Netanyahu, however, refused to step down. “Everyone will need to provide answers, myself included, but all of this will happen only after the war,” he said two weeks later.
The wars — on several fronts — are still underway. In Gaza, Israel’s retaliatory offensive has killed more than 70,000 people, according to the Gaza Health Ministry, which does not distinguish between civilians and combatants.
Some Israelis are calling the expanded fighting, including the U.S.-led war in Iran, the longest war in Israel’s history.
Gayil Talshir, a political scientist at Hebrew University, said Netanyahu did not expect the vote’s proximity to the Oct. 7 anniversary to hurt him.
Rather, Talshir said, the prime minister believed that the election would be about “the story he is trying to tell — that Oct. 7 was the failure of the generals who didn’t wake him up,” and that he has since waged a successful fight on all fronts.
“But that arrogance has blown up in his face,” Talshir said, pointing to recent media reports suggesting Netanyahu personally received warnings before the attack that he did not act on.
Netanyahu has denied the reports. Talshir added that the prime minister’s promise of “total victory” has not held up after three years of war with no end in sight.
Svirsky, whose parents and brother were killed, has watched that narrative take shape up close.
For three years, she has appeared week after week before Knesset committees, reminding coalition lawmakers of the toll of Oct. 7 and of their ministerial responsibility.
“Not a single member of the coalition told me, ‘I’m sorry, this happened on my watch,’” said Svirsky, who works as a performance artist. The evasion of responsibility, she added in an interview, “creates a society lacking self-criticism that is losing its moral compass.”
Einav Zangauker, whose son, Matan, was held in Gaza for 738 days until his release last October, is a former Netanyahu voter who became one of his most vocal critics.
“In a normal country, they shouldn’t even have the legitimacy to offer themselves up for reelection,” Zangauker said. As for her own vote, she would support anyone “who wasn’t at the helm on October 7.”
Matan is slowly rebuilding his life, she said. “When I look at him, deep inside, I see the suffering, what he went through in captivity that I will never fully know,” she said.
Not everyone directly affected by Oct. 7 wants change. Some see Netanyahu as the wartime leader the country needs.
Rom Braslavski, 22, a released hostage, thanked Netanyahu in a call last month for bringing the hostages home and said he would vote for the right, fearing the return of a “Palestinian government” — a reference to the coalition led by former prime minister Naftali Bennett and Yair Lapid that included the Arab Ra’am party.
Tzvika Mor, a resident of the West Bank settlement of Kiryat Arba who joined Smotrich’s Religious Zionism party, also said he wants Netanyahu’s bloc to stay in power. On Oct. 7, Mor’s son, Eitan, was taken by Hamas while trying to rescue people at a music festival. He was released last year after more than two years.
Throughout the war, Mor called for intensifying military pressure on Hamas rather than yielding to its demands.
“When my son was in captivity, I asked the government not to jeopardize national security, so that I would be the last father whose child is abducted,” he told The Washington Post. Mor is now campaigning for a seat in the Knesset, he said, “to ensure that Israel acts properly to deter our enemies.”
For survivors — and for much of Israel — there is a sense that the election is a crucial turning point.
Eyal Eshel, whose 19-year-old daughter, Roni, was killed on Oct. 7, established an organization for bereaved families. Eshel has called for the country’s leaders to resign and for a state commission to investigate. “The task Roni left me is to rebuild what’s broken in Israel,” Eshel said.
Roni, an IDF watch guard stationed on the Gaza border, was among the first to report the border breach on the morning at 6:29 a.m. on Oct. 7.
“Gunmen running toward the fence,” she warned over the radio. Roni stayed at her post, reporting their advance until militants reached the outpost and set fire to the command center with the guards inside.
“I miss a girl who was fun to laugh with and spend time with,” Eshel said.
So far, his efforts at achieving accountability have fallen short, with Netanyahu blocking an independent commission inquiry. Some survivors and family members call that an outrage. “I can’t understand how, three years later, what happened still hasn’t been investigated,” Moshe said.
Eisenkot and Bennett, Netanyahu’s main challengers, have promised to establish an independent commission on their first day in office.
In the absence of such a panel, Zangauker and Svirsky joined other victim’s families last month in compiling the ״Oct. 7 File,״ a record of Netanyahu’s policies that they say allowed the attack. “It is a moral duty to remember how we got to where we are,” Zangauker said.
For Svirsky, the vote is simply about what comes next. “This government glorifies an endless war at the expense of human life,” she said. “The next leadership must be people who hold human life sacred.”
Moshe, whose husband was killed, said she still believes the answer lies in peace with the Palestinians. “Everyone will think I’m a little crazy,” she said, “but despite everything, I think it’s the only solution.”
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