Gal Hirsch isn’t celebrating.

Speaking to The Times of Israel days after the last slain hostage from the October 7, 2023, Hamas attacks — police officer Ran Gvili — was finally laid to rest in Israel, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s point man on hostages seemed lighter, looser and somewhat liberated from the weight he has carried on his shoulders since he was appointed to the position on October 8, 2023.

But Hirsch still seemed haunted by the 38 hostages taken alive and killed inside Gaza as he and his team searched for ways to get them back.

At least some of the blame for the lengthy duration of the efforts, he indicated in the wide-ranging interview, lay with the previous US president Joe Biden’s administration and pressure from other Western allies that convinced Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar that he could stretch out hostage negotiations for years.

“The night I heard about the embargo [on some US supplied munitions] I had a call with a very senior American while driving in the middle of the night. It was a very tough call,” he recalled from the hostage negotiators headquarters in Bnei Brak. “I told him, bluntly — I don’t usually speak this way — what are you doing? You have American hostages there. Israeli-American citizens. Do you understand you’re screwing up the negotiations? You’re giving Sinwar exactly what he wants.”

Hirsch also expressed shock over some aspects of the public pressure campaign inside Israel for a deal, characterizing protests as a result of Hamas’s “very effective propaganda,” which he said was amplified at the rallies.

“Hamas acted to create a rift in Israeli society through very effective propaganda — and by creating the reverse picture — although they were stalling and not wanting to progress in negotiations and torpedoing deals, they pinned responsibility on us, that we were torpedoing negotiations and deals,” he said.

Pressure on Israel from the Joe Biden administration and other Western allies convinced Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar that he could stretch hostage negotiations for years, government hostage pointman Gal Hirsch told The Times of Israel.

He also lamented some aspects of the weekly hostages protests in Tel Aviv, saying they “amplified” Hamas propaganda in a way that “shocked” him.

The charge, which was included in interviews with Hirsch published by other Israeli outlets over the weekend, sparked a firestorm of criticism from families of former hostages, including Einav Zangauker, the firebrand mother of released hostage Matan Zangauker.

“Lucky that President Trump thought differently, and thanks to him and thanks to our wonderful people who went out to fight for our values and didn’t give up, Matan is here at home,” she wrote on X Saturday. “Netanyahu’s floor rag continues the campaign of lies and rewriting history.”

Related: ‘Shame on you’: Former hostage, families hit back at government’s captives point man

Yet as Hirsch described his two-plus years leading the hostage effort, his efforts to connect to the families of the hostages stood out. He made a point of mentioning family members — not only parents, but also siblings and children — by name, pulling them easily from memory.

The hostage issue touches all Israelis, but it seems to hit a particular nerve with the grizzled paratrooper. While Hirsch was 91st Division commander in 2006, Hezbollah killed and abducted two reservists from his sector, sparking the Second Lebanon War. He resigned from the IDF under criticism from a commission of inquiry, but many senior officers came to his defense, leading to his return to active duty in 2012.

In 2016, the Netanyahu ally was nominated to be police commissioner; the bid was eventually dropped over graft suspicions, though the cases were later closed.

Hirsch was a businessman, university lecturer, and family man before the October 7 Hamas-led attack. He put that life on hold to accept the mission of leading Israel’s efforts to locate and bring back its hostages, well before Israel even knew how many people Hamas was holding.

After the initial shock of Israel’s ground operation in Gaza in October 2023, Hamas was desperate for a hostage release-for-ceasefire deal, said Hirsch, resulting in the short November ceasefire in which 81 Israelis and 24 foreigners were freed.

However, talks failed to progress over the subsequent year, despite efforts by Hirsch’s team with the help of the US, Qatar and Egypt. Hirsch firmly rejected assertions made by former IDF negotiating team member Oren Setter that Israel missed opportunities for hostage deals in March and July 2024.

He stressed repeatedly that Sinwar was the main roadblock in reaching a deal. That began to change, argued Hirsch, when Israel assassinated Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah in September 2024 and defeated the Shiite group in Lebanon, then killed Sinwar the next month in Rafah.

He also argued that the failed September 2025 strike on Hamas leaders in Qatar ended up pushing Hamas toward a deal: “It’s clear to all of us that the fact Hamas understood it wasn’t immune anywhere, and the mediators understood Israel’s long arm reached everywhere, had a clear effect on achieving the deal and the return of all.”

Hirsch praised the work of US envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, calling them “very effective.”

The reservist general said that Hamas has no choice now other than giving up its arms, and that “it understands Israel’s resolve.”

Though Gvili’s return marked the first time since 2014 that no Israeli hostages were being held inside Gaza, Hirsch said his mission of recovering captives is not over yet, while declining to say more.

The following interview has been translated, and lightly edited for brevity and clarity.

The Times of Israel: Before October 7, what was your approach to previous hostage deals like the ones that freed Gilad Shalit and Elhanan Tannenbaum? How do you approach the question of future cost versus saving the lives of one or two people?

Gal Hirsch: My position before the war — and it sharpened even more over the past two and a half years — is that in the hostage realm, three parallel actions must occur. The first is prevention, ensuring a hostage event doesn’t happen, that there won’t be an abduction, and making sure Israelis don’t enter places they’re forbidden to enter through public information and law enforcement.

The second is deterrence — clarifying the cost of kidnapping and that we won’t compromise on it, and that abductions will carry a different scale and kind of price.

The third is crisis management of a kidnapping.

If it already happened, I separate between my stance as an Israeli citizen and as a senior officer — a public figure — and the practical aspects of negotiation. I have always seen the fact that Israel is willing to pay heavy prices for our people as saying something about Israeli society and the State of Israel: that every Israeli is precious beyond measure.

Even though we know we’re taking massive risks.

Hirsch: Absolutely. I made it clear over the years — by the way, to the hostage families who sat here with me, to returning captives, and of course to decision-makers — I told them, listen, I’m aware that people walking here on the street below, under my headquarters — some of them are dead men walking. Meaning, we’re releasing murderers, significant percentages of whom return to murder, and we simply have to — if we failed and our people were abducted — we must improve our prevention and deterrence, but we still have to rescue people.

I’m aware that people walking here on the street below, under my headquarters — some of them are dead men walking

Because what bonds Israeli society — the glue, the cohesion — is the fact that all the individuals, comprising over 10 million people, each one knows that Israel will fight for him. It will go to Entebbe; it will go to Burgas. If there’s an earthquake it will go to Kathmandu to extract Israelis; it will go to Antalya to pull Shiran Franco from the rubble. Israel will go anywhere to get Israelis out. It’s the only country in the world that acts like this, willing to pay heavy prices and risk people to bring people home. That glue is a guarantee of Israel’s strength in the years ahead. Demonstrators march with members of the Goldin family, whose son Hadar was killed during the 2014 war in the Gaza Strip, to demand the return of his remains and the return of other Israelis held in Gaza back to Israel, in Kfar Saba on August 3, 2022. (JACK GUEZ / AFP)

But it didn’t work in the decade before October 7. In 2014 we had four captives in Gaza. The country didn’t rise up. The Goldin family marched to the Gaza border, a  few hundred people joined; it wasn’t a big deal.

The results speak for themselves. Four hostages — Hadar Goldin and Oron Shaul, Hisham Al-Sayed, and Avera Mengistu — were there for over a decade. That’s a failure. We can’t call it anything else. It’s a failure. And the fact that Gilad Shalit was abducted — the abduction itself is a failure. And the fact he was returned after more than five years is a failure. That is not a satisfactory outcome from my point of view.

The way we were able to get the four hostages who were there before October 7 was only through the moves we took after October 7.

And by the way, I called those families to me in the first days of my tenure and told them: Look, I still don’t know how many hostages I have in the Gaza Strip—because I didn’t. I knew I had about 3,200 missing on day one, and many hostages— I didn’t know how many. But I called those families and said, I want you to know that as far as I’m concerned, I’m responsible for them and I will bring them back.

It’s not that now I’m only dealing with the newly kidnapped. I called the Goldin family — Simcha........

© The Times of Israel