Addressing rally for hostages, father of captive calls to ‘stop the selection’

Hostage families and their supporters hold two separate, hundreds-strong protests in Tel Aviv to demand a deal to bring home their loved ones.

The rallies come as Hamas officials indicated a deal was at hand, while Israeli officials poured cold water on the optimism. On Saturday, the Wall Street Journal published an interview in which Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he would not end the war in Gaza as part of a hostage deal.

Speaking in front of the Begin Road entrance to the IDF headquarters, Yifar Calderon, cousin of hostage Ofer Calderon and a prominent anti-government activist, slams Netanyahu’s comment.

“We won’t let you give up on them,” she says.

She calls on Israeli negotiators, who were reportedly expected in Cairo, to “do everything to free the hostages and end the damned war.”

Shai Mozes, nephew of hostage Gadi Moshe Mozes, says that even if a deal is reached, protests must continue to ensure “the government of Israel doesn’t find an excuse to scrap an agreement.”

He accuses the government “pounced on the opportunity” to resume hostilities after last November’s truce-hostage deal.

“Hamas said it would stop releasing women and children and continue releasing elderly and slain hostages,” he said, adding that the government preferred to “teach Hamas a lesson, thus abandoning the chance to save lives.”

A block away, at the Hostage and Missing Families Forum’s weekly rally on Hostages Square, speakers reiterate the Forum’s opposition to a deal that doesn’t release all the hostages at once.

Eli Shtivi, father of hostage Idan Shtivi, implores Netanyahu to “stop the selection” — the Nazi practice of sending sickly Jews to die and healthy Jews to slave labor — “the distinction between blood and blood, the division into stages.”

“Now is the time to bring home all 100 hostages, without compromises or stages,” he says