Hostage families chain themselves to bridge during protest on main Tel Aviv road
Activists paint yellow ribbons along route, stage sit-in as police attempt to wash them off; mother of hostage warns Netanyahu that she won’t allow him to abandon her son
A group of protesters led by relatives of the Gaza hostages blocked Namir Road in Tel Aviv during a Friday demonstration calling for the Israeli government to agree to a hostage release-ceasefire deal.
Activists descended on Namir Road early on Friday morning in order to prepare for the protest, painting large yellow ribbons — the symbol of support for the hostages — at various intervals along the route.
Similar drawings were painted on other key routes across the country, including on Highway 2, where the word “abandoned” was emblazoned above the ribbon, and on Highway 4, where the words “because of you” were painted in the same font as the logo used by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud party.
On Namir Road’s Hayarkon Bridge, where the main protest was taking place, the family members fighting for the release of their loved ones chained themselves together, tethering the chain to the bridge to ensure that no traffic could pass.
Among those leading the protest was Einav Zangauker, whose son Matan Zangauker was abducted from his home in Kibbutz Nir Oz on October 7.
Wrapped in chains and standing in front of a banner reading “Abandoned to their deaths,” Zangauker was joined by her daughter, Matan’s sister, Natalie, who two weeks ago was injured by mounted police during a Saturday night protest in Tel Aviv.
“We will not let the executioner from Azza Street abandon Matan and the hostages to their deaths,” Zangauker told the protesters, referring to Netanyahu by the location of his Jerusalem residence.
“The games are over, the spins are over, prime minister, look us in the eye — we will not give up on our children. We will fight until we bring everyone home,” she declared as the crowd picked up her chant of “Everyone! Now!”
Bonfires were lit in the middle of the blocked road, and protesters set off colored smoke bombs in front of banners and posters accusing the government of neglecting the hostages, abducted more than 11 months ago during Hamas’s brutal October 7 invasion and massacre in southern Israel.
Footage of the demonstration showed that at one point, police officers were pushing a group of protesters increasingly close to a makeshift bonfire before other protesters stepped in, forcing them back moments before the large banner they were holding could be set alight.
Elsewhere along the protest route, dozens of demonstrators staged a sit-in, refusing to move even as police attempted to wash the painted yellow ribbons off of the road.
Chants of “There’s no atonement for failure and abandonment!” and “Why are they still in Gaza?” spread among the crowd as protesters picked up the calls from their vantage points on the ground.
Protests calling for a hostage release-ceasefire deal have increased in intensity over the last two weeks, following the execution of six hostages in a tunnel in Rafah late last month, just days before the IDF discovered them and extracted their bodies.
Their deaths after 11 months of captivity, coupled with Netanyahu’s insistence that he would not agree to any deal that required Israel to withdraw from the Philadelphi Corridor along the Gaza-Egypt border, have led to massive protests across the country including a demonstration in Tel Aviv last weekend that police estimated was attended by roughly half a million people, making it the largest rally in Israel’s history.
It is believed that 97 of the 251 hostages abducted by Hamas on October 7 remain in Gaza, including the bodies of at least 33 confirmed dead by the IDF.
Hamas released 105 civilians during a weeklong truce in late November, and four hostages were released before that. Eight hostages have been rescued by troops alive, and the bodies of 37 hostages have also been recovered, including three mistakenly killed by the military as they tried to escape their captors.
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.
