Hostage’s father pleads for forgiveness from his daughter, as large crowds rally for a deal

Thousands of Israelis are demonstrating in Tel Aviv, and other protests are being held in multiple locations nationwide, in support of a hostage-ceasefire deal to enable the release of hostages held captive by Hamas in Gaza since October 7, 2023.

Organizers claim there are hundreds of thousands at the Tel Aviv protests and tens of thousands more nationwide. There are no official figures on the turnout.

“Despite the tensions in the north, hundreds of thousands are taking part” in the Tel Aviv demonstrations, the Hostage Families Forum says. “The people of Israel are voting with their feet in favor of the return of the hostages by means of a deal — the living hostages to rehabilitation and the dead to an appropriate burial in their land.”

Eli Elbag, whose daughter Liri is held hostage, tells the Tel Aviv rally that far-right ministers in the coalition are preventing a deal. “It’s clear to us all that Hamas is to blame, but throughout the year there were opportunities for a deal, and you [the government] didn’t take them.”

He pleads with all 120 Knesset members to raise their voices in support of a deal.

He says he and the other families have never forgotten all those who were murdered by Hamas on October 7, “or the soldiers who have been fighting every day, every hour, for a year.”

Elbag denounces the government for only now tackling the Hezbollah attacks in the north: “A year has passed, and now you remember to deal with the north? Where have you been for a year, while the north has burned? he asks. “They’ve been battered by missiles every day.”

Elbag asks for his daughter’s forgiveness and that of the other hostages “that you are suffering in the tunnels. On Yom Kippur [next month], the entire nation will ask for your forgiveness.”

The Hostages Families Forum, meanwhile, issues a statement hailing MK Gideon Sa’ar’s announcement that he won’t, after all, accept Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahus offer to become defense minister in place of Yoav Gallant.

Sa’ar, the statement says, “is among the opponents of the sacred obligation for a deal to return the hostages.” A man like Sa’ar, it says, “cannot serve as Israel’s defense minister and cannot lead the Israel Defense Forces, whose entire ethos is based on mutual obligation and the imperative to leave nobody behind.”

Large protests are also being held outside Netanyahu’s home in Caesarea, and in Jerusalem, Netanya and numerous other locations.

Relatives of hostages have said in recent days that they are increasingly pessimistic about the prospects for a deal, in part because of the shift in the focus of the war to the north, with no substantive contacts currently between Israeli negotiators and the mediators of a deal. Families of hostages with dual Israeli-American citizenship who held talks with US officials in recent days have also said that the Americans are not optimistic, although the Biden Administration is still trying to push for a deal.

Channel 12 news tonight says that the IDF’s point man in the negotiations told relatives of hostages in recent days: “We are in the midst of the final efforts to revive the deal.”