Mothers of hostages mark nine months since Oct. 7, urge Netanyahu to take deal
Palpable frustration and chants of ‘shame’ as mothers appeal directly to the prime minister; ‘Partial deal is total failure’ reads slogan on stage
Mothers of hostages held by Hamas took part in a protest march alongside at least a thousand other demonstrators on Friday afternoon in Tel Aviv to mark nearly nine months since their children were taken captive.
Nine months will have passed since October 7 this coming Sunday, and the maternal significance of the timespan was not lost on the dozens of mothers leading the march from Habima Square to the nearby Hostages Square a few blocks away.
“Every mother knows what it’s like to go through pregnancy,” said Shira Albag, mother of 19-year-old Liri Albag, in Friday’s blistering heat before the march took place. “I carried Liri for nine months… for nine months now my Liri is there, dealing with darkness in the tunnels, lack of air, and homesickness.”
“There is right now a deal on the table,” she continued, calling on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to “show leadership and courage and sign off the deal.”
The strictly apolitical stance of the march organizer, the Hostages and Missing Families Forum, was not able to contain chants of “shame!” directed at the prime minister once the demonstrators had reached Hostages Square.
The chant echoed throughout the crowd during the speech of Nitza Korngold, the mother of 38-year-old Tal Shoham, who accused Netanyahu’s government of intentionally jeopardizing hostage negotiations.
“Our government, that has the obligation to do everything, everything, to come to an agreement to free the hostages, [instead] torpedoes negotiations and the possibility of coming to a deal again and again,” she said.
The chant was accompanied by two slogans displayed on one of the smaller stages in Hostages Square, which protesters congregated around after completing the march — “Yes to the ‘Netanyahu deal'” and “A partial deal is total failure.”
The latter slogan was a sharp criticism of the prime minister for statements he made last month to the right-wing Channel 14, where he said he is only prepared to agree to a “partial deal,” appearing to contradict the terms of Israel’s latest ceasefire and hostage deal proposal presented by US President Joe Biden last month.
A few days later, the Forum held a press conference in which hostage families came out against the notion of a “partial deal.”
“In nine months, a baby develops in its mother’s womb and a new child is born into the world. In our reality, for nine months now, women, men, and children have been losing their lives. We mothers are waiting and hoping for our loved ones to return home,” continued Korngold, echoing Albag and the other mothers present at the rally.
Ofri Bibas-Levy, whose brother Yarden was kidnapped with the rest of his family from his home in Nir Oz, recently gave birth after discovering only two weeks after the massacre that she was pregnant. She lamented that she has never been able to tell her brother.
“Nine months is a number that for every mother symbolizes creation, renewal, genesis. I’m here to talk about the future, about the reality in which we want our children to grow up. Will it be a reality of fear or a reality of hope?” she questioned. “I want to educate my children for hope, for mutual responsibility, and to tell them that their country did everything to save their aunt and uncle and their beloved cousins.”
