From the Liveblog of
Tuesday, March 18, 2025
Ex-Mossad chief: Protracted hostage releases a ‘disgraceful fraud that led to Judenrat-like selektzia’
Maj. Gen. (res.) Noam Tibon, who emcees the anti-government rally at Habima Square in Tel Aviv, cites police figures saying some 40,000 people attended, making it one of the largest such demonstrations since September.
The rally features speeches from Roni Alsheich, Tamir Pardo and Yoram Cohen — respectively the former chiefs of police, Mossad and Shin Bet — as well as Einav Zangauker, mother of hostage Matan Zangauker, and Rafi Ben Shitrit, whose son Elroi, 20, was killed fending off the Hamas onslaught on October 7, 2023.
Amid a criminal and Shin Bet probe of alleged ties between Hamas backer Qatar and top aides to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Alsheich accuses the premier of letting Qatar serve as a ceasefire mediator precisely so Hamas will stay in power and serve as a counterweight to the West Bank-based Palestinian Authority.
“Qatar’s strategic aim is maintaining Hamas rule,” says Alsheich. “The hostages are a pawn of the Qataris toward that aim.”
He says he began harboring the suspicion early in the war, but “the question marks became exclamation points” when Netanyahu earlier this month announced plans to oust Shin Bet chief Ronen Bar and Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara days after the two announced the probe into Netanyahu’s aides.
Alluding to the premier’s ongoing corruption trial, Pardo assails the “criminal suspect and dictator Netanyahu” for the surprise overnight airstrikes across the Gaza Strip that scuttled the shaky ceasefire and hostage release deal between Israel and Hamas.
“The ‘peace for Netanyahu’ war has begun,” says Pardo. The “coward, charlatan and liar” is putting Israel on track to self-destruction, Pardo further charges.
“We won’t forgive and won’t forget the abandonment of the country’s defense,” says Pardo. “You, the suspect Benjamin Netanyahu, pose a clear and present danger to the nation’s security.”
He twice accuses Netanyahu of selektzia — a Holocaust-era term used to describe Germany’s distinction between Jews deemed fit for hard labor and those sent straight to the slaughter.
The Haredi draft exemption, says Pardo, is “selektzia of blood from blood.” The protracted hostage releases under the Gaza ceasefire deal, he continues, were a “disgraceful fraud that led to Judenrat-like selektzia between hostages,” a reference to Jews empowered by Nazi Germany to choose whom to send to death camps.
“The fraud, deceit and lies will be remembered forever,” says Pardo.
The speeches by Pardo and Alsheich speeches are frequently broken up by jeers and chants of “traitor.”
Cohen, in his speech, asks the audience not to use the word, drawing boos.
Though Cohen also slams Netanyahu’s latest maneuvers, the crowd is displeased with his use of qualifying phrases.
“It’s my understanding,” he says, to annoyed murmurs from the crowd, “that the real existential threat is not Hamas and Hezbollah but those who seek to change Israel’s democratic character.”
Tibon later repeats Cohen’s request that the crowd not call Netanyahu a traitor but is no more successful than the former Shin Bet chief.
Tibon introduces both Ben Shitrit and Zangauker as models of bravery, telling the latter that “I’m a general in the military, but in your struggle to bring back Matan and the other hostages, we’re all your troops and will go where you tell us.”
As Ben Shitrit gets up to speak, the audience chants: “You’re not alone — we’re with you!” The bereaved father takes Netanyahu to task for refusing to convene a state commission of inquiry into failures leading up to the Hamas onslaught, which repeated polls have shown Israelis overwhelmingly support.
The premier, whose government is working to weaken the judiciary, claims such a committee would be skewed against him, since it would be headed by a former Supreme Court justice and its members appointed by Chief Justice Isaac Amit, who the government is boycotting.
Ben Shitrit says a state commission is vital. “How will we mend if we don’t know what we’ve broken, how will we improve if we don’t know where we’ve failed, [and] how will we heal if we don’t know what’s ailing us?”
He says the country’s priorities should be “citizens before the government, kingdom before the king, democracy before politics.”
“We’ll go back to being a model society based on the vision of the prophets of Israel, the conceivers and founders of the Zionist project,” says Ben Shitrit.
In the final speech of the evening, Zangauker urges the crowd to join the hostage families’ encampment outside the IDF’s Kirya headquarters a few blocks away, “where Netanyahu thinks he’ll run the war from.”
“You need to be with me,” she says. “If there are thousands of tents encircling the Kirya, he won’t have a choice but to end the war and bring everyone home.”
She accuses Netanyahu of violating the ceasefire agreement and renewing the war for political reasons.
Paraphrasing US President Donald Trump’s threats against Hamas if it failed to release the hostages, Zangauker says: “Netanyahu didn’t open the gates of hell on Hamas today. He opened the gates of hell on our loved ones.”
The Times of Israel Community.