Cousin of slain hostage to Netanyahu: ‘Would you have also said Yoni came back from Entebbe?’

As multiple anti-government demonstrations held, Gil Dickmann pans PM for taking credit for returning all the captives, noting that many died, just like Yoni Netanyahu in 1976 raid

Anti-government protests were held Saturday in several places around the country, marking the past week’s 1,000th day since the Hamas onslaught of October 7, 2023, and demanding a state commission of inquiry into it.

During a rally attended by hundreds at Habima Square in Tel Aviv, Gil Dickmann, cousin of slain Hamas hostage Carmel Gat, slammed Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for repeatedly saying he returned all 255 hostages from Gaza, even though dozens of them were killed during or after their abduction.

“When you say you brought them all back, you’re abandoning them to their death again,” Dickmann said

He invoked the IDF’s audacious raid, exactly 50 years earlier, to rescue Jews and Israelis who were snatched by Palestinian hijackers to Entebbe, Uganda. Commando Yoni Netanyahu, the premier’s elder brother, was killed in the Entebbe raid.

“Fifty years ago today, your brother Yoni Netanyahu… went out to rescue the Entebbe hostages and he was killed there,” Dickmann said, addressing the premier. “Would you have also said Yoni came back from Entebbe?”

“Yoni gave his life to save hostages. Benjamin gave up the lives of hostages to save himself,” Dickmann said, to applause.

The protest, organized by the Movement for Quality Government (MGQ) anti-corruption watchdog, ended with “Hatikvah,” the national anthem, sung by Dickmann.

Speaking at the protest, MQG board member Michael Partem, a US-born attorney who moved to Israel in 1990, invoked another July 4 anniversary.

He read a Hebrew translation of the 1776 US Declaration of Independence — “We hold these truths to be self-evident” and so on — and declared: “We’re implementing the same rights… that were set by the revolutionaries of ’76.”

“We’re acting against a government that’s going in the precise opposite direction,” he continued, assailing the government’s judicial overhaul. “Instead of proceeding to complete our own constitutional predicament, it seeks, under cover of the overhaul, to scrap checks and balances.”

Other rallies were held in Jerusalem, Haifa, Beersheba and in many locations in the north.