October 7 Survivors and Families Urge Eisenkot to Reject Unity Government With Netanyahu

A group of 710 former hostages, bereaved families, relatives of hostages and survivors of the October 7 massacre appealed to Yashar chairman Gadi Eisenkot and fellow opposition leaders on Monday, November 2, to reject a unity government with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Their open letter urged the leaders to work together to form a new government.

The signatories presented the previous week's election results as a clear demand for a change in leadership. They argued that parties representing that demand had secured 67 Knesset seats, and said opposition leaders now bore responsibility for turning those results into a government that would replace Netanyahu's administration.

The letter's supporters include survivors from communities near the Gaza border who are still displaced from their homes three years after the Hamas-led massacre of October 7, 2023. They warned that cooperating with members of the outgoing government would lend legitimacy to officials they blame for the failures surrounding the attacks and the loss of their loved ones.

For the families and survivors, the question of who remains in power was also tied to their recovery. They said retaining members of the outgoing administration would deepen their trauma and make it harder to rebuild confidence in Israel's leadership. The letter described such an outcome as a further injury to people whose lives had already been profoundly affected by the massacre.

The group also called for the next government to make establishing a state commission of inquiry a priority. The signatories stressed that such a commission had yet to investigate the failures surrounding October 7, and linked their demand for political change to the need to uncover the truth and secure accountability.

In urging opposition leaders to honor their election pledges, the letter connected replacing the government and establishing an inquiry with restoring values the signatories described as central to Israel's founding. They identified mutual responsibility, the sanctity of human life and equality among those principles.

Despite the letter's argument that the election had delivered a political mandate for change, no party leader had formally received the mandate to assemble a coalition as of November 2. President Isaac Herzog was expected to assign that responsibility in the coming days.

The signatories nevertheless urged Eisenkot and the other leaders to move quickly and jointly toward forming a government. Their appeal called for decisive action to end the outgoing leadership's rule, investigate the failures and restore public trust, placing responsibility for the next steps squarely on the opposition.