Lapid visits Hostages Square during strike: ‘They won’t stop us’

Opposition Leader Yair Lapid visits Hostages Square to voice support for hostage families and criticize the government during today’s nationwide strike to call for the release of Gaza hostages and an end to the war.

“We are shutting down the country today,” Lapid says in a video message delivered in the plaza in Tel Aviv as it fills with demonstrators, which he then posts on X.

“Because our hostages are not pawns that the government is allowed to sacrifice for the sake of the war effort — they are citizens that the government must return to their families,” the Yesh Atid chair continues.

“They won’t stop us, they won’t tire us, they won’t exhaust us, we’ll continue to fight until the hostages return home, there’s a deal, the war ends,” he adds.

In a post on X, Blue and White-National Unity chairman Benny Gantz also expresses support for the families and appears to take the government to task for condemning them after several cabinet ministers criticize the strike.

“To attack the families of the hostages – when you bear responsibility for their children being held captive by Hamas for nearly two years – weakens and divides us,” he writes. “To support them – that is what strengthens us and them.”