Protesters across Israel demand hostage deal as IDF launches new offensive

Protests for hostages in Gaza and against the government were held in cities throughout Israel on Saturday, as the military began a major new campaign in the Strip that many hostages’ families fear could derail any chance of their release and possibly lead to their deaths.

The rallies also came days after the release of American-Israeli soldier Edan Alexander from Hamas captivity as part of an agreement between the terror group and Washington that did not involve Israel. He was the first hostage released since late February.

In a statement released Thursday, the Hostages and Missing Families Forum had called on the public to come to Tel Aviv’s Hostages Square, outside the Tel Aviv Museum, to “demand the return of the hostages — above everything, now!”

“The return of Edan must be the start of an agreement that will lead to the return of all 58 hostages — the living for recovery, and the dead for a proper burial. Time is running out, the world is watching, and history will not forget,” said the statement.

At a weekly press conference outside IDF Headquarters on Tel Aviv’s Begin Road, Einav Zangauker, whose son Matan is held hostage in Gaza, issued a warning to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, whom she called “the angel of death,” saying: “You have only one mandate, and that is to make a comprehensive agreement to return all the hostages and end the damned war. Give us back our children.”

Zangauker, one of the more militant of the hostages’ relatives in her statements against the government, said: “If we find out that you again thwarted the opportunity for a comprehensive agreement, we will launch an all-out war on the government until we remove you and your ministers from power.”

At a separate rally in Tel Aviv’s Habima Square, focused on opposition to the Netanyahu government, former prime minister Ehud Barak called for “civic revolt” to bring down the government, saying Netanyahu was “acting impulsively, like a caged animal.”

“A black flag of illegitimacy flies over every one of its actions, and it’s our civic duty to act in every way possible for its downfall, before it marches us into the abyss,” said Barak, speaking before some 1,000 protesters.

Barak expressed support for a plan reminiscent of the Egyptian framework for Gaza’s construction: “A technocratic government alongside a Palestinian bureaucracy, with Saudi and Emirati funding and Egyptian oversight… no Hamas member could take part in the arrangement.” Barak said the framework could have led to Israeli-Saudi normalization and “intimate Israeli involvement in shaping the future of the region.”

“Instead, Netanyahu announced today that he was beginning a foolish war,” said Barak.

The IDF announced late Friday that it had launched the first stages of a previously announced major offensive in the Gaza Strip, dubbed “Gideon’s Chariots,” that will seek to “seize strategic areas” of the Strip. Hamas-run authorities reported dozens killed in heavy Israeli airstrikes overnight and on Saturday morning.

At the same time, Israel and Hamas said they were engaged in renewed talks in Qatar to reach a ceasefire and hostage release deal for the 58 remaining captives in Gaza.

Zangauker said that “Netanyahu is dragging us to a political war that will lead to the death of hostages and soldiers.”

Calling out to her son, Zangauker said, “I know you are alone now, we both know that the prime minister is doing everything so that you won’t return alive. But I want you to know, your mother is fighting for you! The people of Israel are fighting for you!”

She added that “President [Donald] Trump and his envoy [Steve] Witkoff are fighting for you and all the hostages, fighting the prime minister who has turned into the angel of death for hostages,” she said.

Addressing the Israeli public, she said, “You know that this is a political war, a war to destroy the state. Take to the streets tonight.”

Shai Mozes, the nephew of released hostage Gadi Mozes, said alongside Zangauker that “instead of fully implementing the previous agreement — the agreement that returned my uncle and 32 other hostages, alive and dead — Netanyahu blew it up for political reasons and renewed the war. And today, instead of saying yes to Trump, Netanyahu is saying yes to [his far-right coalition allies].”

Addressing Trump, he said: “Mr. President, you are the only one who can influence our indifferent and disconnected government. Give Netanyahu and Hamas an ultimatum to end the war. This is probably the only way to return the hostages and save Israel from the ongoing destruction.”

Also addressing the Hostages Square rally was former hostage Mia Schem, who was released from Hamas captivity in November 2023 after 55 days in Gaza, telling the crowd that she cried this week as she watched Alexander come home.

“Edan returned to his mom, but he doesn’t know what I already do: that chapter two begins now,” she said.

“The recovery won’t be complete until the return of all the hostages,” she said, adding that the return “will be full of physical and emotional triggers — greetings from the hell we’ve been through which will come without warning, again and again.”

Schem also recalled how, when she was kidnapped from the Nova music festival, “I was snatched to Gaza by seven Hamas monsters who pulled me by the hair into a car. I was afraid my scalp would be torn off. My hair became a mass of dried-up blood and mud.”

When her captors filmed a propaganda video of her, Schem said, “they were ordered to make me look good, so the world wouldn’t suspect how demonic they are.”

“But my hair was a knotted blob, so one of the captors approached me with scissors to cut my hair,” she told the crowd, adding that she struggled against the forced haircut “with all my dwindled might” until her captors relented.

“I couldn’t bear the thought of losing my hair,” she said, likening herself to the Biblical Samson. “Since then, whenever I see scissors, whenever I take care of my hair, that moment comes back. My body shakes uncontrollably and I have trouble breathing.”

Schem, who recently revealed that she is the complainant who accused a well-known Tel Aviv trainer of rape, said she “recently had a terrible experience [and] was asked to cut a curl of my long hair for the [police] investigation.”

“My body reacted again with horror,” she continued. “In a moment, I was thrown back to my days in captivity, to the human monsters who sought to cut my hair.”

“Anxiety attacks are a part of the returnees’ lives as a result of the hell we’ve been through. They’re part of us and take a very heavy toll,” she said. “Every additional day in which our brothers and sisters experience emotional and physical torture by Hamas monsters makes it harder to recuperate and pick up the pieces.”

Separately, some 300 left-wing protesters held their now-weekly silent protest featuring pictures of Gazan children said killed by Israel since it resumed hostilities in the Strip on March 18.

The protest march began outside the southern entrance to IDF headquarters on Kaplan Street, silently walking to Begin Road.

The somber silence of the left-wing protest was upended for some 20 minutes as anti-government protesters marched from Habima to Begin Road, beating on drums and shouting slogans.

As the anti-government crowd approached, an organizer of the left-wing protest reminded those activists that this was a silent demonstration.

Hundreds of left-wing protesters march outside the IDF headquarters in Tel Aviv hoisting candles and pictures of Gazan children killed by Israel pic.twitter.com/huEj75GWK9

— Noam Lehmann (@noamlehmann) May 17, 2025

Some of the protesters quieted down and looked closely at the pictures. Others were more skeptical. One woman, speaking to her friend, recounted telling a left-wing activist that Hamas had “murdered [people] like you as well” during the onslaught of October 7, 2023.

Also speaking at the anti-government protest on Begin Road was Maj. Gen. (res.) Noam Tibon, who rushed to Kibbutz Nir Oz on October 7, 2023, to save his son, Haaretz journalist Amir Tibon. At the rally, he said that “Israelis don’t abandon their wounded” and should not “abandon hostages in Hamas’s tunnels in Gaza.”

“That’s what I was taught in the Sayeret Matkal commando unit and the Paratroopers Brigade,” said the retired general, adding that in Nahal Oz he had “saved and rescued whomever I came across, because I’m an Israeli.”

“The reason the hostages aren’t home is the government of failure and destruction, led by Benjamin Netanyahu, who has thwarted all agreements,” he said, adding that the premier had done so as recently as this week.

“Netanyahu, the coward, has surrendered to Smotrich and Ben Gvir and said no to a hostage deal,” he said, adding that the remaining living hostages could have been home by Passover, last month, had Netanyahu not refused to proceed to the second phase of the last Gaza ceasefire, which would have required Israel to withdraw from the Strip — a red line for Ben Gvir and Smotrich.

Once a deal is made to get the hostages out, Tibon said, “we can deal with Hamas, with international support and a full consensus in Israeli society.”

After the speeches, protesters lit a bonfire on the street, though police quickly put it out. Protesters continued chanting: “The hostages are in Gaza for too many days, the blood is on the hands of the government of horrors.”

‘King Bibi’ attackers

Earlier on Saturday, at a rally in Rehovot, supporters of the government were filmed attacking protesters. In footage of the incident, protesters could be seen standing with Israeli flags at a crosswalk, as several individuals confronted them. The attackers tried to break protesters’ flags, threw objects at them, and shouted “King Bibi.”

Opposition Leader Yair Lapid said the attack was the result of the “violent poison machine leading the government.” The “poison machine” is the name critics of Netanyahu use for what they say is a network of pundits, journalists, influencers, and activists dedicated to besmirching the premier’s political rivals.

אלימות במחאה ברחובות: צעירים ירדו מהרכב – ותקפו מפגינים למען שחרור חטופים

צילום: הילי ברוק, מחאת רחובות | @OrRavid pic.twitter.com/uOMeyNpU9N

— החדשות – N12 (@N12News) May 17, 2025

“We won’t stop and won’t abandon the hostages until everyone returns home,” Lapid wrote on X.

“Tonight’s violence against protesters is not an accident, it is a direct result of the incitement led by Netanyahu and his partners. It is political terrorism aimed at silencing and deterring,” The Democrats party chairman Yair Golan claimed, vowing to “not give up” until the hostages are freed, the war is ended and Israel is saved from “corruption, incitement and fear.”

Attacking protesters and desecrating flags “is neither right nor left — but simply a criminal act of a small, incited and extremist handful motivated by hatred,” weighed in National Unity party chairman Benny Gantz.

Calling on the police to bring the perpetrators to justice, Gantz said that the Israeli people “are fed up with extremists who are doing everything they can to divide us.”

Yisrael Beytenu chairman Avigdor Liberman similarly issued a call for wartime unity, declaring that such incidents are unacceptable and that Israelis must not let toxicity “disintegrate Israeli society.”