From the Liveblog of
Saturday, January 11, 2025
Tel Aviv police scuffle with demonstrators after declaring rally outside army HQ is illegal
Tel Aviv police push anti-government, pro-hostage deal protesters to the sidewalk outside the Begin Road entrance to the IDF headquarters after declaring the demonstration illegal.
Protesters initially ignored police orders, triggering a large shoving match between activists and law enforcement that saw officers drag away at least two people.
Amid the kerfuffle, protesters chant “Ben Gvir is a terrorist,” referring to the far-right national security minister’s convictions on charges of supporting a terror organization and incitement to racism.
Police remove roadblocks and order a resumption of traffic as officers form a human wall in front of the sidewalk to stop protesters from going back on the road.
Some 200 protesters remain from what has been a demonstration of around 1,0000 people that features speeches from several relatives of Hamas hostages.
Former captive Ilana Gritzewsky, whose boyfriend Matan Zangauker is still a hostage, tells the crowd that she’s “lost everything, but I’m here fighting even when it feels impossible.”
“I fight so our soldiers won’t die,” she says, and for “a deal, an end to the war and to revive our nation.”
“Being in Hamas captivity is to reach the depths of fear and humiliation,” she says, adding that she sometimes wakes up screaming from nightmares.
“My greatest fear is not what was, but what will be,” she says. “My fear is that Matan and the other hostages won’t come back to us and my nightmares will be their reality.”
Shai Mozes, nephew of hostage Gadi Mozes and ex-captive Margalit Mozes, says “support for the fight to bring back the hostages should be self-evident.”
However, he continues, “there are people in the State of Israel who fight us and smear us as enemies of the state. We won’t forget them, and won’t forgive.”
“It’s been a year already that considerations such as revenge, settlement and political survival have gained the upper hand over what should be the only consideration — saving the life of Israeli citizens.”
“Military pressure kills the hostages. Withholding humanitarian aid starves the hostages,” he says.
“The only way to bring back all the hostages — the living for rehabilitation, the murdered foe burial — is to end the war,” says Mozes.
