On her solidarity visit to Israel, President Katalin Novák said that "what had been happening to Israel could not be indifferent to us Hungarians".
After arriving in Jerusalem on Sunday, the Hungarian president met her Israeli counterpart Isaac Herzog and later relatives of Hungarian citizens who had been taken hostage by Hamas. Israel has the right to defend itself, Novák told Herzog, condemning the Hamas attack. She called the horrors of Oct. 7 “shocking”, pointing out that the terrorist acts were unanimously condemned by all Hungarians irrespective of their political orientation and they stood in solidarity with Israel. Novák reassured Herzog that Hungary stood up for Israel. She told him, and later the relatives of the Hungarian hostages that the suffering of the families was for her as a mother of three children “particularly painful”. President Novák expressed her heartfelt solidarity to the relatives of the hostages and listened first to the story of a mother whose daughters, aged 8 and 15, had been kidnapped by Hamas from a kibbutz. She afterwards learnt about the story of a 47-year-old father of two small children, who was told by Hamas that his wife and children would be left alive if he agreed to go voluntarily with Hamas. The man’s family members told Novák that they had no information about him ever since. The president promised the families that she would do all she could for the release of all of the Israeli hostages held by Hamas.