Desperate for hostage deal, furious at PM, masses take to the streets in protest

Tens of thousands of people once again rallied in Tel Aviv and throughout Israel on Saturday night to demand the return of the 59 hostages still held in Gaza and to protest against government efforts to weaken the judiciary and fire key gatekeepers.

At the main demonstrations in Tel Aviv, masses gathered in public squares and in the streets to listen to speeches from former hostages and the families of those still in captivity, as well as Tel Aviv Mayor Ron Huldai.

The protests began hours after Hamas released a propaganda video of hostage Elkana Bohbot pleading for his release. It was the second video of Bohbot released by the terror group in the past week, after it published a clip of him and fellow captive Yosef-Haim Ohana five days prior.

Following the release of the video, the Hostages and Missing Families Forum urged “all Israelis, from every background and political viewpoint” to attend the Saturday night protests in support of “a comprehensive agreement that will bring all hostages home at once, without delay.”

As the night’s events got underway, thousands of anti-government protesters began to gather at Habima Square in Tel Aviv, waving Israeli flags, and holding posters calling for the release of the hostages and emblazoned with slogans against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his government. Similar events were held in cities and intersections across the country at the same time.

While the events passed mostly without incident, some protesters clashed with police toward the end of the night, and law enforcement officers were filmed violently dragging and detaining demonstrators.

Speaking to protesters at Habima Square, Einav Zangauker, mother of hostage Matan Zangauker, accused the government of carrying out a “targeted assassination” against her son, after Israel launched a surprise aerial attack on Gaza last week, followed by a renewed ground offensive in the days that followed, scuttling the fragile ceasefire and hostage deal with Hamas.

“Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has decided to bomb Matan instead of saving him and bringing him home,” said Zangauker.

“Netanyahu knows my Matan is bound in chains, starved, beaten, with no air, light or hope, and nonetheless he’s decided to continue abandoning him,” she added. “The hostages are held captive by Hamas, and the entire nation of Israel is held captive by Netanyahu.”

Zangauker also accused Netanyahu of de-prioritizing the hostages while passing the 2025 state budget and railed against his efforts to oust Shin Bet chief Ronen Bar and Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara. “Netanyahu, you can’t evade your guilt for the October 7 massacre. The only way you can mitigate your punishment is to bring a comprehensive deal now for all 59 hostages and an end to the war.”

Tel Aviv Mayor Huldai, who took the stage after Zangauker, said it was “difficult to speak after Einav, who can express the pain with such force and spirit.”

 

The nation is at war, Huldai told the crowd, but “not the futile, life-threatening, hostage-abandoning re-entry into Gaza.” Rather, he said, “We’re at war because the government is trying to demolish the ground we’ve stood on for almost 80 years,” the mayor said.

He said that, if the High Court were to rule against the government’s dismissal of Bar and the government were to ignore the ruling, then “we in the municipalities will also know how to overrule and derail the day-to-day life that the government imagines will go on.”

After the speeches, the crowd spilled out of Habima Square and marched toward the demonstration on Begin Road, in front of the IDF headquarters, where hostage families who have adopted a more political tone than the weekly Hostages Square rallies were protesting against the government.

“The government prefers dead hostages. Dead hostages talk less. They don’t give interviews, or fly to [meet US President Donald] Trump,” declared Yotam Cohen, brother of captive soldier Nimrod Cohen, adding that if the government “doesn’t manage to kill them with military pressure, they’ll kill them in roundabout ways.”

Cohen recalled to the crowd that when the Begin Road protests grew exponentially in September after the murder in captivity of six hostages, Netanyahu’s office accused protesters of emboldening Hamas.

That response, he said, is similar to the Hamas statement that protesters against the terror group in Gaza this week were “friends of the Zionist enemy” and were demanding unacceptable concessions.

“Netanyahu and Hamas use the same rhetoric and the same psychological terrorism for suppression and silencing,” Cohen said. “The symmetry is sickening.”

He also claimed that he had heard from former hostages held with his brother that their captors “refrained from exposing them to Israeli media, and when the hostages asked why, they responded, ‘to protect them.'”

“To protect them from statements of [National Security Minister Itamar] Ben Gvir the terrorist, [Settlements and National Missions Minister] Orit Strock, [Finance Minister Bezalel] Smotrich and Netanyahu,” Cohen said, referring to far-right ministers who oppose a hostage deal.

“For every populist tweet by Ben Gvir about humanitarian aid, another hostage is starved. For every threat by [Defense Minister Israel] Katz, another hostage is beaten. For every statement by Netanyahu, another hostage loses hope that they’ll be brought back home,” he told the crowd.

Across the street at Hostages Square, former captive Iair Horn, whose younger brother Eitan is still in captivity, pleaded with Israel’s lead hostage negotiator, Strategic Affairs Minister Ron Dermer, to meet with him and his family and “explain to us why you don’t sign a deal, like all of Israeli society is asking, and put an end to this nightmare that began 540 days ago.”

“Explain to us why we’ll be having another Passover seder without Eitan,” he asked. “Please explain to us why Eitan, who is still very sick with a difficult skin disease, remains in the tunnels.”

“Returning the hostages needs to be the top national priority, but there’s no progress in negotiations,” Horn said. “We’ve resumed the fighting — fighting that endangers the hostages. I was there, I tell you, I heard tanks rolling over me, I ran in the tunnels during the bombings, I pulled Eitan by the arm when he didn’t have the energy to move anymore — ‘I’m not leaving you here,’ I yelled to him.”

“I know there is someone who can pull someone by the arm to get out all the hostages now… before they become collateral damage,” Horn said, calling on the government to reach a deal by Passover, which begins on April 12.

Horn, who was released on February 15 as part of the now-scuttled hostage-ceasefire deal with Hamas, said he spent “498 days underground, without water, without seeing the sun, without breathing fresh air.”

“I’m sick of being ‘without.’ From now on, I want to be ‘with,'” he said. “It’s almost Passover, the festival of freedom. I wish us a Seder ‘with’ — with the living hostages who have to come home, with the fallen who have to be buried.”

Also speaking at the Habima Square rally, Bar Godard told the crowd that the military had tried and failed to recover the body of her father, Manny Godard, who was murdered and dragged to Gaza on October 7, 2023.

She said that an IDF officer told her family of the “daring operation and brave soldiers who tried to rescue my father,” and that despite not being able to, they had seized a fridge that contained evidence belonging to him.

The officer told her her was “so sorry,” she said, commending him for taking responsibility for the failed operation.

“I couldn’t but help think of another person who, since October 7, has not taken responsibility for anything,” she said, referring to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. “If only he would dare to come to Nir Oz or Be’eri and look at us in the eye.”

After the main rallies ended, protesters marched to Kaplan-Begin intersection in central Tel Aviv, where some of them faced off with mounted police officers who attempted to control the crowds.

“Ben Gvir is a terrorist!” protesters chanted, as cops pushed them westward, up Kaplan Street and away from the Ayalon Highway, while mounted officers formed a line on the intersection’s eastern edge.

Two people were detained.

Democrats lawmaker Gilad Kariv was filmed yelling at police officers through a megaphone, accusing them of storming the crowd despite there being no violence from protesters.

שוטרים נכנסים לתוך קהל ודוחפים מפגינות ומפגינים

תל אביב 29/03/2025 pic.twitter.com/dfc6dRmvWv

— אלימות ישראל (@Alimut_Israel) March 29, 2025

Police were also filmed violently dragging a protester after telling demonstrators to clear the road in front of the Kaplan Street entrance to the IDF headquarters.

Although the protester was standing on a traffic island in the middle of the street, a police officer accused him of failing to clear the road by not going to the sidewalk. When the protester objected that he was already off the road, the officer put him in a chokehold and dragged him away.

A police officer in Tel Aviv puts an anti-government protester in a chokehold after accusing him of failing to clear the road, although the protester was standing on an island in the middle of the street. pic.twitter.com/C1EuOOM6Dz

— Noam Lehmann (@noamlehmann) March 29, 2025

In a statement after the protest, the Israel Police said that the protest had been declared “illegal” by cops on the scene, but that protesters nevertheless “continued to disturb the order and tried to block traffic lanes.”

‘The hostages are of no concern to Netanyahu’

In Jerusalem, thousands of protesters calling for the release of the hostages marched to the Prime Minister’s Residence on Azza Street,

Some marchers carried a banner that read: “Dermer, 59 or resign,” in reference to the 59 hostages still held in Gaza and the negotiating team that he heads.

At the protest in front of the premier’s house, the grandfather of freed hostage Naama Levy told the crowd that he had lost faith in Israel’s political leadership and was calling for Netanyahu’s ouster.

“You abandoned them [the hostages] on October 7 and you continue to abandon them now, too,” he said, addressing the premier directly.

He charged Netanyahu with declining to proceed with the second phase of the agreed-upon ceasefire with Hamas in favor of winning back Ben Gvir and his far-right Otzma Yehudit party, which had resigned from the coalition in protest of the deal.

“In just the past few days, you renewed the war in Lebanon because they violated the ceasefire. What is stopping you from stopping the war in Gaza, returning all the hostages and, if they violate the peace, returning to war?” he added. “The hostages are of no concern to Netanyahu, maybe they are just a fabrication, and there’s no such thing as citizens, soldiers, or hostages that are still stuck in Gaza.”

לא נעצור! כולם צריכים לחזור! ירושלים הערב pic.twitter.com/HSM57d7Ljm

— amos schurr (@AmosSchurr) March 29, 2025

Jucha Engel, whose grandson Ofir was freed in a hostage-truce deal in November 2023, spoke next, repeatedly calling Netanyahu “Mr. Abandonment.”

“The use of force has already cost the lives of 41 hostages… Their blood is on the hands of all the government ministers and Knesset members,” Engel said.

Saturday’s mass demonstrations were held against the backdrop of an ongoing impasse in the hostage negotiations amid the resumption of fighting in Gaza, as well as the government’s passage of key judicial legislation and its highly controversial moves to fire Shin Bet chief Ronen Bar and Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara.

A poll aired Friday by Channel 12 showed that 69 percent of Israelis support ending the war in exchange for a deal that releases all remaining hostages in Gaza, compared to 21% who oppose such an agreement. Even among coalition voters, a majority (54%) back such a move compared to 32% who oppose it.

Over 100,000 people were believed to have taken part in demonstrations across Israel the previous Saturday, marking the largest day of protests in months as anger boiled over at the government’s failure to reach a deal to free more hostages, compounded by Netanyahu’s moves to fire key officials in a bid to assert greater control over the levers of power.

Protests continued throughout last week, especially in Jerusalem, where thousands of demonstrators rallied against the government’s recent moves, including the advancement of the judicial overhaul plan and the Knesset’s vote on the contentious 2025 state budget.

The protests in Jerusalem also called for the release of the 59 remaining hostages held by terror groups in Gaza, 35 of whom have been confirmed dead by the IDF.