At Tel Aviv rally, daughter of couple slain on Oct. 7 says government is ‘defiling our dead’

Weekly anti-government and left-wing demonstrations were held Saturday evening in multiple locations across the country to decry the government’s policies on Haredi military exemptions, settler violence, the lack of a probe of Hamas’s onslaught of October 7, 2023, and more, with hundreds attending the main rally at Tel Aviv’s Habima Square.

Shir Matias, whose parents Deborah (Shachar) and Shlomi were killed protecting her brother Rotem at their Kibbutz Holit home in the Hamas-led 2023 mass invasion, accused the government of having “violated the most basic contract between state and citizen” by failing to probe the security debacle and seeking to codify the Haredi exemption from military service.

“A huge part of the public carries a full burden, and another part is exempt from it,” she told the roughly 300 people who showed up for the rally. “Rights and duties are handed out for political reasons and not for the collective good.”

The government “defiles our dead, ignores our suffering and dodges establishing a state commission of inquiry” into the Hamas attack, she said.

“Everyone whose hands were on the steering wheel on October 7 needs to go home,” she said. “Accountability can’t be a dirty word in a state that wants to keep existing.”

Appealing to Likud and Shas voters, Maj. Gen. (ret.) Yom Tov Samia contended at the rally that the government has betrayed its own right-wing values on the Haredi draft issue.

“How the hell does the right subsidize draft dodgers at the expense of combat soldiers?” he asked.

The government has also failed to vanquish Hamas, which “won’t hand over its weapons” despite signing an agreement to that effect this week, claimed Samia.

The ex-general said he himself “can’t be suspected” of animus to Jewish tradition, because he grew up in a traditional Libyan Jewish home and founded a 400-member synagogue.

Samia also railed against what he called “efforts to associate” him with “Second Israel,” a phrase coined by pro-government pundit Avishai Ben Haim to refer mostly to underprivileged Mizrahi Jews who support Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Sephardic Haredi party Shas.

“I know only one Israel,” Samia said, calling on “my partners in the Jewish tradition” from Shas and Netanyahu’s Likud to “stop voting for this government of debacle.”

Rallies were also held in various places in the north, including Haifa, with some protesters blocking roads. Demonstrations were also held in Modiin.