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

By Noam Lehmann 1 August 2026, 9:29 pm

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Shir Matias, whose parents Deborah (Shachar) and Shlomi were killed protecting her brother Rotem at their Kibbutz Holit home in the Hamas-led onslaught of October 7, 2023, speaks at an anti-government rally in Habima Aquare, Tel Aviv, August 1, 2026. (Movement for Quality Government in Israel)

Shir Matias, whose parents Deborah (Shachar) and Shlomi were killed protecting her brother Rotem at their Kibbutz Holit home in the Hamas-led onslaught of October 7, 2023, accuses 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 tells the roughly 300 people who showed up for this week’s anti-government rally at Tel Aviv’s Habima Square. “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 says.

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

A protester at an anti-government demonstration at Habima Square in Tel Aviv on August 1, 2026, holds a photo of Deborah (Shachar) and Shlomi Matias, of Kibbutz Holit, who were murdered in the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas-led massacre. (Yoav Loeff / Pro-Democracy Protest Movement)

Appealing to Likud and Shas voters, Maj. Gen. (ret.) Yom Tov Samia says 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 says.

Anti-government protesters attend a weekly rally at Habima Square in Tel Aviv, August 1, 2026. (Yoav Loeff/Pro-Democracy Protest Movement)

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

The ex-general says 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 rails against what he calls “efforts to associate” him with “Second Israel,” a phrase coined by 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 says, calling on “my partners in the Jewish tradition” from Shas and Netanyahu’s Likud to “stop voting for this government of debacle.”