Protests in Haifa, Caesarea kick off Saturday night rallies

By Canaan Lidor 6 April 2024, 7:24 pm

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Canaan Lidor is a former Jewish World reporter at The Times of Israel

In a photo released by anti-government activists, protesters march in Haifa calling for elections now, April 6, 2024. (Eilat Markovitch)

Several hundred people march through Haifa holding signs, calling for new elections in one of the first of dozens of protest actions against the government on Saturday.

Hundreds more chant “you are guilty” near Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s private residence in Caesarea.

In the march from Carmel Center to Horev Center in Haifa’s western mountaintop neighborhood, several participants hold a banner reading “SOS Elections,” as others wave signs with the second and 16th letters of the Hebrew alphabet, which form the acronym for “elections now.” Rallies are also planned to take place in Sderot, Tel Aviv and Jerusalem.

Slogans and signs at the march criticize the government on a range of issues, including the handling of the war with Hamas, the fact that hostages have not been retrieved and the problems facing evacuees from the north.

Carmit Palty Katzir, a resident of Haifa and past participant in the protests, blames the government for the death of her brother Elad, who was murdered by Hamas terrorists in Gaza and whose body was retrieved from Gaza over the weekend. The People’s Protest, a Haifa group behind the march, publishes Palty Katzir’s statement on Facebook just ahead of the march.

“The Prime Minister, members of the War Cabinet, and members of the coalition, look at yourselves in the mirror, and ask yourselves whether it was not your hand that spilled that blood. You still have 133 hostages to redeem—worlds to save,” she writes.