Far-right Heritage Minister Amichay Eliyahu (Otzma Yehudit) said Thursday that IDF hostage negotiator Nitzan Alon was to blame for the October 7, 2023, Hamas assault on southern Israel, as other members of the governing coalition also lashed the top general for claiming they had delayed bringing captives home.

Speaking to Army Radio as the nation marked 1,000 days since the worst massacre in its history, during which some 1,200 people were killed and 251 were abducted into Gaza, Eliyahu said Maj. Gen. (res.) Nitzan Alon was “to blame for people being kidnapped.”

“They were murdered because of Nitzan Alon and this approach that placed terrorists on the fence,” Eliyahu said, referencing the so-called military “conception” that saw Hamas and other terror groups build military strength inside Gaza, in close proximity to Israeli communities.

The minister, who has called for the wholesale annihilation of Gaza, was reacting to comments by Alon the previous day in which the general said Israel could have ended the war in Gaza sooner and gotten more hostages back home alive.

“If we went along with Nitzan Alon, we’d now… have Hamas back on the fences again, opposite [Israeli] towns, and then what would be? Who would be to blame?” Eliyahu charged after being asked about Alon’s comments.

Alon, a former head of Central Command, served as the IDF’s point man on hostage negotiations after being appointed by then-IDF chief of staff Herzi Halevi to head the Hostages and Missing Persons Headquarters. He left the position in November 2025.

On Wednesday, Alon hit out at Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, who claimed credit days earlier for the return of all the captives held by terror groups in the Strip.

In fact, Alon said, Smotrich and others in the government had torpedoed ceasefire deals that would have brought back hostages before they died in captivity, as they sought more war........

© The Times of Israel