At demo, mother of Nova massacre victim accuses coalition members of demeaning dead and trafficking their memory

Reut Recht-Edri, whose son Ido was killed at the Nova festival during the Hamas-led onslaught of October 7, 2023, accuses coalition lawmakers of demeaning the dead by urging bereaved families to tone down their criticism of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

“Our children, our parents, our siblings, have turned into political pawns,” she tells some 500 anti-government protesters at Tel Aviv’s Habima Square.

MK Moshe Gafni, in particular, “is trafficking the bodies of our loved ones — the blood of our sons,” Recht-Edri says.

The Haredi lawmaker this week secured daycare funding for his constituents by threatening to vote in favor of a state commission of inquiry into failures surrounding the October 7 attack. Netanyahu has rejected such a commission.

Recht-Edri vows to keep fighting “until this country looks us in the eye and tells us the truth.”

“Our pain has for a long time now stemmed not just from what Hamas did to us,” she says. “Our pain also stems from what has happened since then — the obtuseness, the smugness, the unending attempt to distort.”

Also speaking at the rally, former general and deputy Mossad chief Amiram Levin accuses Netanyahu of having “taken or tried to take from us” nearly “every good thing we’ve built” in Israel since it was established.

Ahead of the coming elections, “we have to show anger and rage over how we’ve been trampled,” he says.

The elections are sure to feature challenges, including confrontation with the far-right “militias” of National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, which have “already been training for months on the Palestinians,” charges Levin.

“If the democratic population of Israel shows up in droves, they’ll lose,” Levin says. “The country is ours… we can’t forfeit it to cowards, draft dodgers and hacks.”