Tens of thousands protest, blaming government for failing to free Gaza hostages
Relatives say Netanyahu ‘sacrificing the hostages’ as northern front heats up without hostage-truce deal with Hamas; police arrest former IDF chief outside PM’s home in Caesarea
Tens of thousands of Israelis demonstrated in Tel Aviv and across Israel on Saturday night, in support of a hostage-ceasefire deal to enable the release of hostages held captive by the Hamas terror group in Gaza since October 7 and amid the threat of a major assault from Hezbollah in Lebanon.
Organizers claimed there were hundreds of thousands of people at the Tel Aviv protests and tens of thousands more nationwide, though there were no official figures on the turnout.
The protests came amid escalating fighting with the Hezbollah terror group on Israel’s northern border, as the Israel Defense Forces conducted a wave of airstrikes in Lebanon on Saturday afternoon and evening to thwart what it said were imminent rocket attacks, as the terror group sought to respond to the assassination of two of its top commanders on Friday.
“Despite the tensions in the north, hundreds of thousands are taking part” in the Tel Aviv demonstrations, the Hostage Families Forum said in a statement on Saturday evening.
“The people of Israel are voting with their feet in favor of the return of the hostages by way of a deal — the living hostages to rehabilitation and the dead to an appropriate burial in their land.”
Einav Zangauker, whose son Matan Zangauker was kidnapped from his home on Kibbutz Nir Oz on October 7 and is still held captive in Gaza, said that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, faced with the choice of agreeing to a deal for the return of the hostages or escalating the fighting with Hezbollah, has chosen “regional escalation, and decided to sacrifice the hostages on the altar of keeping his seat.”
“Just as Netanyahu nurtured Hamas for years, now he’s collaborating with Sinwar, by giving him what he wants: a regional war,” she said. “The price is being paid, and will be paid, by the hostages, and all the citizens of Israel.”
Protests calling for a hostage deal have been held every Saturday night since the first weeks of the ongoing war against Hamas, steadily growing in numbers.
For months, they were held alongside separate, anti-government protests, but the two demonstrations joined together three weeks ago, after the Israeli military recovered the bodies of six Israeli hostages who had been murdered by their captors days earlier, sparking outrage across the country.
Eli Albag, whose daughter Liri was abducted from the IDF’s Nahal Oz base on October 7, told the Tel Aviv rally on Saturday that far-right ministers in the coalition have been intentionally preventing a deal. “It’s clear to us all that Hamas is to blame, but throughout the year there were opportunities for a deal, and you [the government] didn’t take them.”
He pleaded with all 120 Knesset members to raise their voices in support of a deal, saying he and the other families have never forgotten all those who were murdered by Hamas on October 7, “or the soldiers who have been fighting every day, every hour, for a year.”
Albag also denounced the government for only now tackling the Hezbollah attacks in the north: “A year has passed, and now you remember to deal with the north? Where have you been for a year, while the north has burned? he asked. “They’ve been battered by missiles every day.”
Albag asked for his daughter’s forgiveness and that of the other hostages “that you are suffering in the tunnels. On Yom Kippur [next month], the entire nation will ask for your forgiveness.”
The rally was also addressed by Shahar Mor, whose uncle Avraham Munder was kidnapped from his home in Kibbutz Nir Oz and died in Hamas captivity after not receiving vital medication.
“In the name of false unity, we’ve been told to sacrifice our loved ones in silence. Anyone who doesn’t is slandered and attacked,” he said. “My uncle Avraham Munder was kidnapped alive, and survived between four and six months. It’s not Hamas anymore — his blood is on the hands of the government.”
Police later arrested Mor, though it was not immediately clear why. Demonstrators — including Labor MK Gilad Kariv — surrounded a police cruiser in Tel Aviv and blocked it from moving immediately after the arrest.
A statement from the police said that Mor was arrested near the home of the defense minister, and that he would be released and summoned tomorrow for questioning.
In Caesarea, where the Haaretz newspaper estimated that about a thousand protesters gathered in front of Netanyahu’s private residence, demonstrators blocked traffic until they were forcibly dispersed by police.
המשטרה עצרה בהפגנה בתל אביב את שחר מור זהירו, אחיינו של אברהם מונדר שגופתו חולצה מעזה. המפגינים חסמו בגופם את הרכב אליו הוכנס@OferHalfonKan pic.twitter.com/SUpNdVombe
— כאן חדשות (@kann_news) September 21, 2024
Among those arrested was former IDF chief of staff Dan Halutz, whom police lifted by his arms and feet as other demonstrators shouted at the officers, “Aren’t you ashamed?”
Police also made arrests in Jerusalem, organizers said.
In Tel Aviv, the central protest dispersed around 10 p.m., though organizers said some thousands of people continued to demonstrate on Namir Road, where police put out a small bonfire.
Also on Namir Road, on which a yellow ribbon was painted with the words, “Thou shalt not abandon,” cars burned in the October 7 attack were carried by other vehicles in a procession, covered in banners denouncing the government and calling for a hostage deal.
A similar convoy of burned cars paraded through Caesarea.
In Tel Aviv, protesters stopped at the junction of Namir Road and Pinkas Street, near the home of MK Gideon Sa’ar of the New Hope party, who is considering leaving the opposition and joining Netanyahu’s government.
Earlier Saturday, Sa’ar announced that he would not accept Netanyahu’s offer to become defense minister in place of Yoav Gallant, a move that the Hostage Families Forum hailed in a statement blasting the potential new addition to the cabinet.
Sa’ar, the statement said, “is among the opponents of the sacred obligation for a deal to return the hostages.” A man like Sa’ar, it said, “cannot serve as Israel’s defense minister and cannot lead the Israel Defense Forces, whose entire ethos is based on mutual obligation and the imperative to leave nobody behind.”
Protests were also held in Haifa, Beersheba, Rehovot, Hadera, Kfar Saba, Netanya, and numerous highway junctions across the country.
Relatives of hostages have said in recent days that they are increasingly pessimistic about the prospects for a deal, in part because of the shift in the focus of the war to the north, with no substantive contacts currently between Israeli negotiators and the mediators of a deal.
Families of hostages with dual Israeli-American citizenship who held talks with US officials in recent days have also said that the Americans are not optimistic, although the Biden administration is still trying to push for a deal.
On Saturday evening, Channel 12 news said that the IDF’s point man in the negotiations had told relatives of hostages in recent days: “We are in the midst of the final efforts to revive the deal.”
It is believed that 97 of the 251 hostages abducted by Hamas on October 7 remain in Gaza, including the bodies of at least 33 confirmed dead by the IDF.
Hamas released 105 civilians during a weeklong truce in late November, and four hostages were released before that. Eight hostages have been rescued by troops alive, and the bodies of 37 hostages have also been recovered, including three mistakenly killed by the Israeli military as they tried to escape their captors.
Hamas is also holding two Israeli civilians who entered the Strip in 2014 and 2015, as well as the bodies of two IDF soldiers who were killed in 2014.
