October 7 Victims' Families Blame 15 Years of Failed Policy for Massacre

Families of victims from the October 7th Hamas attacks held a press conference in Tel Aviv on Tuesday, presenting a document titled "October 7 Dossier: Israel's Strategic Failure Against Hamas Over the Past 15 Years." This dossier, compiled from open-source information, focuses on the events and policies preceding the attack, differing from other groups that concentrate on preventing future tragedies. Shelly Mashal-Yogev, mother of Libi Cohen-Meguri who was killed at the Nova festival, stated, "An erroneous concept is the reason my daughter is in the grave. For 15 years, Israel has been on a direct course to the October 7 catastrophe." She criticized Prime Minister Netanyahu's promise to answer difficult questions after the war, arguing that listening to warnings would have saved her daughter's life.

Natalia Casarotti, mother of Keshet Casarotti-Kalfa, also killed at the Nova festival, played a recording of her son's last call to emergency services, highlighting his fear and the lack of immediate assistance. She appealed to the government to "turn on your conscience, assess everything fairly, the money for Hamas, the warnings about the attack, the decisions you made, and the failure itself, and the 1200 killed." Casarotti urged the creation of a state commission of inquiry.

Gil Dickmann, cousin of Carmel Gat, who was abducted and killed, directly addressed Netanyahu, stating, "Was Netanyahu not woken up on October 7? Our dossier has a thousand alarm clocks." He vowed that the families would not allow the government to downplay the "decade and a half of failure" or to lie about the return of hostages.

Einav Tsangauker, mother of Matan Tsangauker who was held captive for 738 days, accused the government of a continuous campaign to evade responsibility since the war began, using "lies, conspiracy theories, attempts to divide society, slander of the IDF." She demanded a serious discussion about the past 15 years and presented the dossier as a list of decisions by successive governments operating under a flawed concept.

A joint statement from the families asserted that Netanyahu's inner circle launched a public relations campaign immediately after October 7 to shift blame solely to the security system. The dossier's findings, they emphasized, demonstrate that the massacre was not an isolated error but the result of years of policy that enabled Hamas to prepare and execute the largest terrorist attack in Israel's history.