‘600 days of failure’: Thousands join nationwide rallies urging hostages’ release

Thousands of Israelis attended nationwide demonstrations on Wednesday, marking 600 days since hostages were taken by Hamas terrorists during their onslaught of October 7, 2023, with families, freed captives and their supporters shedding light on the plight of those who remain held in the Gaza Strip.

Some 3,000 people crowded into Tel Aviv’s Hostages Square and the adjacent Shaul HaMelech Road for a rally, with actor Lior Ashkenazi, who regularly emcees the Hostage and Missing Families Forum’s rallies at the Square, kicking off the event with an angry tirade against the government for not reaching a ceasefire-hostage deal in Gaza or probe the security failure that resulted in October 7.

“Six hundred days since the failure, and another 600 days of failure,” he said, as the crowd jeers and hoists pictures of the remaining captives. “Six hundred days of abandonment, of fleecing the public, of covering up the investigation of the greatest failure in our history,” Ashkenazi said.

Iair Horn, who was released from Hamas captivity in February as part of the latest Gaza ceasefire, said he is unsure if his younger brother Eitan Horn, who remains captive, is still alive.

Horn recounted the fear of instant death in captivity. “In the tunnels, you can’t know if a terrorist will get up one morning and just shoot you, or if the tunnel where you’re sleeping will be blown up because of a bomb,” he said.

During one Israeli strike, he said, his captors “grabbed us and we started running in a totally crooked tunnel, which could collapse at any moment, trying to escape the bombing and toxic fumes.”

“We run and run until Eitan sits, with all his 100 and something kilos… and tells me: ‘I’ve come this far. Leave me,'” Horn said. “I grabbed him by the arm and dragged him, dragged as much as I could, until my strength ran out.”

Then, Horn said, he told his brother: “‘If you don’t start moving, we’ll both die here.'”

“So he got up,” Horn said. “Now I’m not there to drag him by the arm.”

“We were saved by luck, but the luck has run out,” he said. “Instead of luck, we need to sign off on an end to the war. Instead of luck, we need to bring back the 58 hostages, now — drag them out by the arm to a safe place back home.”

“We can’t sacrifice anymore — enough,” he said. “Enlisted soldiers giving their body and soul — I’d rather they be on vacation. Brave, experienced reservists — I’d rather they took their kids to kindergarten every morning.”

“So I address you, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu,” he said, as the crowd jeered in response to the premier’s name. “You brought me back home. Do it again.”

Ohad Ben Ami, who was released along with Yair Horn, spoke about the five hostages with whom he was held in an underground tunnel — Yosef Haim Ohana, Bar Kupershtein, Elkana Bohbot, Segev Kalfon, and Maxim Herkin — who remain there, “in the same cold nights, the same daily fear.”

“Everyone is still alive — with the operative word being ‘still,'” Ben Ami said.

“In the latest videos [published by Hamas] I saw them, but not like I knew them,” Ben Ami said. “The fear I saw in their eyes doesn’t leave me. Their physical condition is awful, their mental condition is still more awful.”

In the tunnels, he said, “We lived off of scraps, physically and emotionally, and while I’m here talking to you, they’re still there, breathing, but barely.”

“Don’t let them be forgotten,” he said. “Don’t let day 601 come as though nothing happened.”

Idit Ohel, mother of hostage Alon Ohel, said that the country cannot miss the opportunity to return captives, stating regular polling finds “the return of hostages is the key to rehabilitation” of the country.

Miriam Lapid, a founder of the 1970s settler movement Gush Emunim, who became a symbol of national trauma in 1994 when her son and husband were murdered in a Hamas attack near Hebron in the West Bank, also spoke at the rally, calling on the government to “declare an end to the war now, the return of all the hostages.”

“You cannot leave anyone behind,” she added.

Lapid raised some eyebrows on the right in March, when she railed against the government at a Jerusalem protest against Netanyahu’s motion to oust Shin Bet chief Ronen Bar. She later told religious news site Kipa that the speech, in which she urged religious people to join the demonstrations, had been improvised after someone in the crowd recognized her and asked her to speak.

Elsewhere, anti-government protesters faced off with police officers, some on horseback, outside Metzudat Zeev, the Likud party headquarters in central Tel Aviv, where over 60 activists were arrested after dozens of people stormed the building.

Inside, some protesters managed to reach the office of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, while some tied themselves to the staircase railings.

The Detainee Support Organization said those detained at “Metzudat Zeev Tel Aviv, turned this evening into the Qatari embassy,” were taken to the Salame police station in the city’s south.

The embassy display aims to mock aides to Netanyahu, head of the Likud party, who are accused of criminal ties to Hamas-backer Qatar.

Cops at Metzudat Zeev dragged protesters from the road to the sidewalk. Some of the protesters wore orange jumpsuits and masks with Netanyahu’s face.

Protesters applauded as they projected a Qatari flag with the caption “Embassy of Qatar” in Hebrew and Arabic onto the building, which is named for Revisionist Zionist leader Zeev Jabotinsky and houses an institute that published his writings.

The protesters chanted “Civil rebellion” and “Ben Gvir is a terrorist,” referring to National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir, who oversees the police.

Police later announced 62 people were arrested for violating public order and clashing with officers, two of whom required medical treatment, including one who broke his arm.

Likud denounced the unrest as “a pogrom,” charging that “democracy is under attack” and likening the demonstrators who stormed the building to the Trump supporters who rioted at the US Capitol on January 6, 2021, in a bid to thwart the certification of the presidential election results.

“These are dangerous lawbreakers who are trying to sow political terror and undermine the foundations of the state,” said a statement from the party.

מפגינים נכנסו לתוך מצודת זאב התיישבו על המדרגות וקשרו עצמם למעקה, המשטרה מנסה לפנות אותם pic.twitter.com/oiFY3NFzSW

— Bar Peleg (@bar_peleg) May 28, 2025

In Jerusalem, several hundred protestors gathered at Park HaMesila before marching to the home of Strategic Affairs Minister Ron Dermer, who has not secured the release of any additional captives since being appointed by Netanyahu as head of Israel’s hostage negotiations team in February.

“Alive, alive, we want them alive!” the protestors called. “There will be no forgiveness for a government that abandons its people.”

As the protesters approached Dermer’s home, police officers moved a set of barricades, allowing the marchers to move closer to the front.

“Ron Dermer, quit, there is no other option,” they chanted in front of his house.

Among the speakers at the rally was Shlomo Alfasa, brother-in-law of Avner and Maya Goren, both Kibbutz Nir Oz members who were killed on October 7, with Avner’s body found in the fields and Maya’s body taken captive to Gaza. Alfafa said Netanyahu and Dermer should bring home the 58 hostages, 57 of whom were abducted during the Hamas-led attack, and stressed that he is not right-wing or left-wing, but a centrist.

“Our prime minister didn’t have results, so he got rid of the defense minister, and then-IDF chief of staff Herzi Halevi, and then the Shin Bet chief, and now it is time to get rid of Ron Dermer,” Alfasa said.

“Dermer, Dermer, quit!” chanted the protesters. “We don’t want you anymore.”

Alfasa concluded his remarks by saying Dermer has never met with any of the hostage families. “I’m here, come out and talk to me,” he added.

At Reichman University, students earlier marched 15 kilometers from Herzliya to Tel Aviv’s Hostages Square, where they joined students from Tel Aviv University. in Jerusalem at Hebrew University, students and faculty at the Mount Scopus campus gathered for a 58-minute demonstration for the 58 hostages still held captive.

Hundreds of young Israelis learning in pre-army preparatory programs took part in a series of marches that departed every two hours from Tel Aviv’s Hostages Square and followed a path around the nearby Defense Ministry compound.

A motorcade of dozens of cars drove from Latrun to Tel Aviv, and hundreds of people participated in the silent sit-in held by Shift 101 at Tel Aviv’s historic Bialik Square.

Maccabit Meir, aunt to hostage twins Ziv Berman and Gali Berman, said that victory in Israel can’t be achieved without the return of the brothers to their mother’s arms, along with the return of the rest of the hostages. Only then can Israeli society heal, she said.

“I hope you are able to remember your hopes and dreams and transmit your thoughts to one another even if you’re not together,” Meir told her nephews.

Meir was joined by Ruti Strum, the mother of Eitan and Iair Horn, as well as Dalia Cusnir, the Horns’ sister-in-law, and Niva Wenkert, the mother of released hostage Omer Wenkert.

Singer-songwriter Rona Kenan joined them and softly led the gathering in singing “Sahki, sahki,” a social protest song written by Shaul Tchernikovsky 120 years ago.

Terror groups are still holding 57 of the 251 abducted by Hamas-led terrorists on October 7, 2023.

They include the bodies of at least 35 confirmed dead by the IDF, and 20 hostages who are believed to be alive. There are grave concerns for the well-being of three others, Israeli officials have said.

Hamas released 30 hostages — 20 Israeli civilians, five soldiers, and five Thai nationals — and the bodies of eight slain Israeli captives during a ceasefire between January and March, and one additional hostage, a dual American-Israeli citizen, in May as a “gesture” to the United States.

The terror group had already freed 105 civilians during a weeklong truce in late November 2023, and four hostages were released before that in the early weeks of the war.

In exchange, Israel has freed some 2,000 jailed Palestinian terrorists, security prisoners, and Gazan terror suspects detained during the war.

Eight hostages have been rescued from captivity by troops alive, and the bodies of 41 have been recovered, including three mistakenly killed by the Israeli military as they tried to escape their captors, and the body of a soldier who was killed in 2014.

The body of another soldier killed in 2014 is still being held by Hamas and is counted among the total 58 hostages.