Mother of slain hostage says living must be brought back first

Yael Adar, the mother of slain hostage Tamir Adar, accuses Netanyahu of condemning living hostages to be executed, saying they must be saved before the remains of those already dead, as she addresses a massive rally for a hostage deal in Jerusalem.

“I see you standing the living hostages before a firing squad, so how can I think that you are able to bring back the slain hostages?” she says, addressing the prime minister outside of his official Jerusalem residence.

“You need to save the living hostages before they pay with their lives, because in their souls, they are already paying for every second,'” she says.

Though Adar stresses in her speech that the “desire and duty of a mother to bring back her dead son is no less than the desire and duty of a mother to bring back her living son,” she adds later that the living hostages must be saved before the dead.

“I ask, in the spirit of Tamir, who went out to save lives, to save first those who can still be saved, and then to continue to the return of everyone until the very last one of them,” she says. “Like a car accident on the street, we first give help to those we can be saved and afterwards evacuate those who were killed or murdered, but it will happen in the same deal.”

The rally, which drew tens of thousands to Paris Square in central Jerusalem, has since largely drawn to a close, with the crowd quickly thinning out.

Reports indicate that one protester was arrested by police.