Eyal Eshel and his daughter, Roni, z’l, in a photo that has by now become iconic in Israel (Photo: social media)
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It takes a person profoundly disconnected from Israeli society not to recognize this father. But meet MK Moshe Gafni.
Gafni explicitly refuses to look Eyal Eshel in the face. Why? “Don’t want to,” he said. This is the depth to which this government has sunk?
In Israel, Eyal Eshel’s name and face are ubiquitous. Eshel has become a leader of the movement to establish a National Commission of Inquiry to investigate what led to October 7 and what happened on that day. Eyal Eshel’s daughter was Roni Eshel, z’l, a spotter in the Nachal Oz Outpost, who was declared missing for 34 days before her body was finally located. She was one of that group of “spotters” who warned their superiors about suspicious activity behind the border but were summarily dismissed, because they were low on the IDF totem pole and undoubtedly, in large measure because they were women.
Eyal and Sharon Eshel discovered how their daughter died only through a social media post that was made by one of Roni’s commanding officers, which detailed the officer’s escape from the war room and the inevitable death of those who were left behind in it, given that it was burned down by the terrorists.
Eyal has related as well that his daughter told him, about three weeks before October 7th, that a person on the Gaza side of the border held up a “happy birthday sign” for one of the spotters, precisely on the day of her birthday—an indication of the deep intelligence Hamas had gathered on the outpost and the people stationed there.
Eyal is one of the members of the civil committee of inquiry that has been working to investigate and to collect as much evidence as they can about October 7th, with the hope of passing it to the state committee of inquiry, should one be created.
It is, therefore, pretty much impossible to live here and not to recognize Eyal Eshel. But in the video we’ll see below, MK Gafni literally had no idea who Eshel is, and assumed that if Eshel was at the Knesset demanding something, his daughter must be a hostage.
But of course, she’s not a hostage. Eyal Eshel’s daughter is dead.
As the head of the Ashkenazi Haredi Party “United Torah Judaism,” Moshe Gafni is a somewhat prominent face in the current coalition.
As noted above, we’re sharing today’s video not because of Gafni’s personal approach to any of the issues the Knesset meeting was meant to discuss, but because of the abject disregard he demonstrates—along with many other members of the coalition—for a population of parents whose hearts are breaking.
He is, of course, hardly alone. Keep in mind that as of today, the Prime Minister has yet to visit most of the Kibbutzim that were destroyed along the Gaza border. Some 500 days in, The PM hasn’t found an hour to walk around the closest thing that Israel has to death camps.
This isn’t about whether it is Netanyahu’s fault or not. We won’t know until there’s a National Commission of Inquiry, which Netanyahu has consistently blocked, and which is the subject of the brief exchange above, between MK Gafni and Eyal Eshel.
Whether or not it’s true that Netanyahu has scuttled hostage deals out of political considerations—there are many such claims—I don’t know. Regardless of the answer to that questions, though, when parents’ hearts are breaking, if you are part of the ruling government, you owe them a certain kind of respect.
Unless, of course, you couldn’t care less about them, because they’re not part of your constituency.
Gafni’s views on the drafting of Haredi young men to help support the ongoing war effort are precisely what one would expect. When the Supreme Court ruled this past June that it was no longer allowing the “games” to continue and that the draft had to happen, MK Avigdor Lieberman, for example, tweeted, “After years of smearing and attempts to reach compromises and understandings, the High Court made a decision that does justice to the public. In a year in which we lost an entire cohort of soldiers who fell in battle or were seriously injured, in a year in which reservists served over 200 days, there is no more justified proof that the IDF needs more personnel.”
Moshe Gafni had a different take. “There is not a single judge there who understands the value of Torah study and their contribution to the Jewish people throughout the generations,” this despite the fact that there are several religious judges on the court.
Gafni was strongly opposed to the Supreme Court ruling that the state must recognize gay marriages carried out abroad, stating: “We don’t have a Jewish state here. We have Sodom and Gomorrah here.” To his credit, he was one of the few ultra-Orthodox public figures to condemn the violence carried out by members of the community over plans for the 2006 Jerusalem gay pride parade.
In February 2016, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu criticized Gafni and other government leaders for making disparaging remarks about Reform and Conservative Judaism. Gafni, following a decision to expand the egalitarian section of the Western Wall, declared he would refuse to recognize the decision, and that Reform Jews were “a group of clowns who stab the Holy Torah.”
It may come as comfort to non-Orthodox Diaspora Jews that Gafni has disdain for Israelis who are not like him no less than he does for Diaspora Jews with whom he disagrees.
When Noa Kirel, the young Israeli singer who represented Israel at the Eurovision, kept her composure even in the face of boos, catcalls and threats to her own security, the entire country applauded her spine and courage. She became an overnight sensation and national hero.
Not for Gafni, though. This comment is still much remembered:
No sense of pride in a young woman who has more guts than most people he’s met no sense that he’s part of anything larger than his party and its constituents.
Welcome to the government that is still in place 500 days since the worst day in Israeli history.
