The Bibi Files Premieres AT TIFF (Toronto International Film Festival) - Part II
The Murder of Six Hostages
On Sunday, September 1, Israel was shattered by the IDF confirmation that six hostages had been murdered in a Hamas tunnel in the preceding days. That, perhaps more than anything since October 7, convulsed the nation.
Netanyahu has made a habit over the last year of avoiding the messy post-October 7 stuff. He avoids meeting with hostage families. Released hostages. Families of the fallen. He avoids visiting sites like Kibbutz Nir Oz, which were destroyed physically and where more than one quarter of its residents were either murdered or taken hostage. He avoids speaking with Israeli media, preferring more supplicant, hand-picked foreign journalists. And the criticism, clearly, has stung.
So, after this shock, of six hostages who had survived pure Hell for 11 months, the Prime Minister’s Office reached out to the families of those who were sitting shiva - the Jewish mourning ritual. Only one family agreed to receive the Prime Minister of Israel in their home.
The Shiva of Ori Danino
Rabbi Elchanan Danino and his family are ultra-orthodox and live in the Jerusalem neighborhood of Ramot. Danino’s eldest son, Ori, was among the six murdered in a cramped, filthy, fetid Hamas tunnel. He had survived 11 months in this Hell.
In his teen years, Ori strayed from the ultra-orthodox lifestyle in which he’d been raised. He served in the IDF. On October 7, he was at the Nova Festival, enjoying life.
Ori was one of those superhuman people who had escaped the carnage but returned to the inferno to help as many people save their lives. Until Hamas snared him.
His father, Rabbi Elchanan Danino, lacerated Prime Minister Netanyahu when he visited the family shiva last week with his wife, Sara. (This encounter was recorded on a personal phone and aired on Israel’s Kan television network. It has since been widely reported on in Israeli media.)
“You sat there quietly for 15 years, not doing anything…..You equipped them [Hamas] with swords.....everything happened on your watch. My son was murdered in a tunnel that you built on your watch.”
Netanyahu told Rabbi Danino that what he was saying was not true, and that he could argue with him, but that this was neither the time nor place.
Danino continued. “Forgive me, forgive me, but you’ve been in power for many years. The concrete and the dollars went into [Gaza] on your watch.”
Danino is referring to Netanyahu’s strategy of “containment”, about which the Prime Minister boasted often before October 7. He - and many others in the political, intelligence and security establishments - decided that Hamas had evolved as a governing authority and actually aspired to rule with an eye to the best interests of the quality of life for the 2.5-million people living in the Gaza Strip. So his successive governments allowed the Qataris to enter Gaza every month with suitcases stuffed with $35-million in cash. He also allowed what are known as “dual use materials” – cement, iron, gasoline, vehicles – to enter the Strip with very little restriction. These materials were used to build the subterranean network of terror tunnels, a robust arms manufacturing capability and to arm and train tens of thousands of Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad fighters. Much of the money – from a range of sources – was clearly siphoned off to fatten the multi-billion dollar bank accounts of Hamas’ top leadership.
Another element of the containment strategy was to allow tens of thousands of workers from Gaza into Israel. Every day. They earned much more working in Israel, enabling them to provide for their families. Many of those same men returned on October 7 to the communities and people they knew so well. They murdered, plundered and tortured. It was these men - some brought along their wives and children for the excitement - who had contributed such valuable intelligence to Hamas leadership over years. This is why the elite Hamas fighters knew the location of every weapons armory and every security officer on every kibbutz and village. And the Hamas terrorists made sure that these security officers were the first to be murdered, rendering the inhabitants utterly defenceless. When Danino scolds Bibi about everything having gone down on his watch these are the things he refers to.
At one point during this shiva call, Netanyahu spoke of his brother Yoni, the storied commander of the elite commandoes who led the impossibly daring rescue mission in 1976 in Kampala, Uganda, freeing 103 hostages. Yoni – the older brother who Bibi worshipped – was the only casualty among the rescue team and by all accounts his death was devastating to the family. Understandably.
One of Danino’s brothers interrupted the prime minister. “No, no, you don’t understand. You built your career on your brother’s back. Enough already. I buried my brother! Your brother was a true national hero. Where did that get lost? I don’t know.”
Ouch.
At one point, Bibi’s wife Sara spoke up, telling the Danino family that her husband was isolated, alone and burdened with such enormous responsibility. He was “very alone”, she said.
“Alone”, Bibi agreed. “Against the whole world. Facing the President of the United States and people here, and facing military elements here.”
Sara Netanyahu also accused Rabbi Elchanan Danino of saying things that others told him to say. Only the Netanyahus were telling the truth. Any other information was a conspiracy of lies.
Elchanan Danino responded to Sara Netanyahu.
“Nobody tells me what to say.”
The imperiousness of Bibi and Sara Netanyahu that was on full display at the Danino shiva is, like their appearances on the leaked interview recordings, astonishing.
Michal Lobanov, Widow of Hostage Alex Lobanov
Earlier this week, a gut-wrenching segment aired on Israel’s Kan television network.
Michal, the beautiful, forlorn 29-year-old wife of Alex Lobanov, 33, is filmed meeting on a park bench with Andrey Kozlov.
Alex had been working as a bartender at the Nova Festival on October 7. Michal was pregnant with their second child. He was born seven months ago and is named Kai. Big brother Tom, now two, still looks out and calls for his father from their apartment balcony in Ashkelon.
Alex Lobanov was taken hostage by Hamas. He was also one of the six Israelis murdered in late August with a bullet to the back of the head. In the propaganda video released by Hamas, he states that he has been moved ten times by his Hamas captors in order to save his life (from Israeli air attacks). As do the other hostages in similar videos, Alex slams the Netanyahu government for failing to protect him on October 7 and to reach a deal for his release since that time. And as all hostages do in these coerced videos, he expresses love for his wife, son and other family members.
For the first two months of his captivity, Alex was held together with Andrey Kozlov and others. And this is why Michal and Kozlov met on the park bench. She needed to know. Anything. Everything. About her husband’s time in Hamas Hell.
A 28-year-old Russian from St. Petersburg, Kozlov had been working security at the Nova Festival and had only been in Israel for one year at that point. His English is far better than his Hebrew. He told Michal that he was so grateful to be held with Alex initially so that he could speak Russian.
“Was he laughing”, Michal asked?
Kozlov paused. “We didn’t laugh.”
“Was he crying?”
Kozlov looks away from her and remains silent.
“Yes”, she says.
“What were the guards like?” She needs information. Anything.
“Some were neutral. Not nice not horrible.” Kozlov added. “But some were disgusting. They’d put a Kalashnikov at your head and tell you - ‘I can kill you.’”
In late November, the guards told Alex he was being released the next day. His beard and head were shaved. He and Kozlov exchanged notes with telephone numbers and names of loved ones. Whoever got out first would call those on the list.
Michal speaks further in an interview with just a reporter. “I am not a political person,” she says. “But I trusted the Prime Minister. I believed him when he said that he would bring him (Alex) back.”
She wanted Alex to return alive, she says, not in a coffin. And, she added, Netanyahu was Prime Minister on October 7 and every day since. He has yet to take any responsibility for this disaster.
Asked what she would do if Netanyahu was to come to see her, she does not hesitate or flinch.
Michal laments that so many families have been destroyed. She said she would tell Netanyahu to think. And for once to put aside his ego, look into his soul and take responsibility.
The Bibi Files: What the Film is About
These last nine years in Israel, the turmoil and roiling domestic unrest, are about so much more than champagne and cigars.
They are about the slow ruination of a nation which must be stopped.
These years are about patterns of behavior and moral rot which are the direct causes of the national dysfunction and intensifying domestic implosion we are seeing, in real time.
That is what the film is about.
Heart wrenching