Anti-government activists, hostage families holding Sat. night rallies despite Iran threat
Film screening to urge deal canceled at last minute; protests going ahead in Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, Ra’anana, provided Home Front instructions don’t change
Anti-government activists and relatives of hostages held by Hamas in Gaza were planning to hold rallies on Saturday night to put pressure on the government to secure the captives’ release, despite razor-sharp tensions amid the looming threat of an attack on Israel by Iran and its proxies.
The Hostages and Missing Families Forum had originally planned to screen a documentary on Saturday evening in place of its weekly rally, having this week marked 300 days since the abductees were taken and amid the Iran attack threat, but in a statement on Saturday afternoon instead called for supporters to take to the streets.
The updated announcement said that along with a protest at Tel Aviv’s so-called Hostages Square, protesters would gather outside the homes of Defense Minister Yoav Gallant and Shas leader Aryeh Deri to put pressure on the government to close a hostage-ceasefire deal with Hamas.
Anti-government protesters were also going ahead with their regular demonstrations in cities including Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, calling on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to close a deal with Hamas, though at the time of writing the weekly rally at Kaplan Street had been canceled.
“Time has run out for me and the 114 hostage and we, the families, do not have the privilege to stop the struggle,” Einav Zangauker, the mother of hostage Matan Zangauker, one of the leading voices in the movement calling for the release of hostages, said in a statement.
“As long as the Home Front Command doesn’t change the instructions, we’ll be at Begin to shout the cry of our loved ones from the tunnels,” she vowed.
IDF Home Front instructions remain unchanged for civilians as the country braces for a response to the assassinations this week of Hezbollah’s military chief in Beirut and Hamas’s leader in Tehran.
“We must demand that Netanyahu say yes to a deal that will save lives and can also prevent an all-out war,” Zangauker added.
Protests in Tel Aviv at the intersection of Begin and Kaplan Street, dubbed Democracy Square, have been held every Saturday night since the anti-judicial overhaul movement began in January of last year, except for a few-months-long hiatus following the Hamas terror onslaught on October 7.
The organizers of this Saturday’s rally are a group of around a dozen hostage families operating under the name “Kulanu Hatufim” (“We are all hostages”), are known for their fiery protests outside IDF headquarters in Tel Aviv and for blocking the Ayalon Highway every Saturday night.
Other anti-government protesters were also planning to demonstrate next to Netanyahu’s private residence in Caesarea.
Netanyahu “surrounds us with walls of despair and fear, aiming for an endless war,” the anti-government group Moked Caesarea wrote on X in its protest announcement on Saturday. “We are in Caesarea. And we have no intention of moving!”
In Jerusalem, a collective of anti-government groups announced on X that they would march to Paris Square for their weekly rally on Saturday evening, while posts on social media from various anti-government groups called on the public to join demonstrations in cities including Ra’anana, Kfar Saba and Kiryat Tivon.
Channel 12 news said on Friday night that Netanyahu had rejected calls from his security chiefs to seize the current opportunity for a hostage-ceasefire deal, though his office said in a statement shortly after the report was aired that the premier had authorized Israeli negotiators to travel to Cairo. Reports said the team arrived Saturday afternoon
It is believed that 111 of the 251 hostages abducted by Hamas on October 7 remain in Gaza, including the bodies of 39 confirmed dead by the IDF. Some 1,200 were killed in Israel on October 7, mostly civilians, when thousands of terrorists breached the Gaza border and invaded.
Hamas released 105 civilians during a weeklong truce in late November, and four hostages were released before that. Seven hostages have been rescued by troops alive, and the bodies of 24 hostages have also been recovered, including three abductees mistakenly killed by the military as they tried to escape their captors.
One more person has been listed as missing since October 7, and their fate is still unknown.
Hamas is also holding two Israeli civilians who entered the Strip in 2014 and 2015, as well as the bodies of two IDF soldiers who were killed in 2014.
