‘The State of Israel has to save them’: Thousands rally in Jerusalem for hostage deal

Thousands of protesters rallied on Tuesday in Jerusalem, demonstrating against the government and demanding an immediate hostage deal, as the recent wave of protests continued to intensify in reaction to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s decision to resume fighting in Gaza and his moves to fire the head of the Shin Bet and attorney general.

Tuesday’s demonstrations in the capital were divided into several areas near the government compound, with different sections for anti-government and hostage release protests and sit-ins.

A large group gathered outside the Prime Minister’s Office, where some family members of hostages gave speeches to the crowd, including the sister of freed hostage Yarden Bibas, whose wife and two young sons were murdered in captivity.

“Yarden returned alive, [but] Shiri, Ariel, and Kfir were returned dead in a coffin, I can’t run away from these words, from this reality,” Ofri Bibas Levy said. “Military pressure kills the hostages, military pressure raises the casualties.”

Addressing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his government, she said: “Don’t offer condolences, bring forth a deal,” adding that the only way to do so is to end the war in the Gaza Strip.

Outside the Knesset building, as the government voted on the 2025 state budget, several hundred anti-government protesters marched, with some yelling into bullhorns about the prime minister being “a dishrag” and accusing him of betraying Israeli values.

Police forcibly removed several protesters from outside the Knesset, and images and footage showed police officers dragging demonstrators one by one.

Speaking from the main stage in front of the government building, released hostage Nili Margalit spoke to the rally-goers, begging the government to reach a deal to free the remaining hostages in captivity.

Kibbutz Nir Oz resident Margalit was released in November 2023, after 54 days in captivity, during a temporary truce between Israel and Hamas. During their brutal October 7, 2023, attack on Nir Oz, Hamas terrorists murdered Margalit’s father, Eliyahu, and abducted his body to Gaza.

A nurse by trade, Margalit recalled helping treat elderly kibbutz members held with her in Gaza. She added that soon after she was released from Hamas captivity, Israel returned to fighting “very much like now,” with many hostages who were members of the kibbutz since killed in the Strip.

“It was possible to save them,” she said. “I want to shout from here, ‘enough!’ They need to get out, and they have no way to do it alone… the State of Israel has to save them.”

‘No one speaks to us’

The third protest area was a mostly silent sit-in organized by the Shift 101 group, which included hostage family members and their supporters, sitting on the asphalt at the intersection between the National Library and the Israel Museum.

At the sit-in, Family members spoke every so often, talking about their utter despair and the lack of contact with any members of the government.

Varda Ben Baruch, grandmother of hostage Edan Alexander, and Viki Cohen, mother of hostage Nimrod Cohen, sat next to each other at the Shift 101 sit-in, wearing white for the hostages.

Ben Baruch told The Times of Israel about Friday, March 14, when the family read in the Hebrew media about a possible deal with Hamas to release Edan Alexander, the only remaining living American-Israeli hostage, along with the bodies of four other hostages.

“We were in shock,” Ben Baruch said. “We were only hearing from the media, we didn’t know what to do, maybe Edan was coming home.”

Ben Baruch said they heard nothing else, and on Sunday night, in the middle of the night, as she was sleeping, her body began vibrating, “I said, ‘Varda, what’s going on, Edan is coming, Edan is coming!'”

She turned on the television and heard that there were IDF strikes in Gaza and that the war had begun again.

“No one speaks to us,” she said. “Our country is not making any efforts for the hostages. Where is Phase 2? Where is Phase 2? They forgot it; Bibi forgot about it.”

“There is a prime minister who refuses to deal with the issue; there are other more important issues for him,” Viki Cohen said, adding that she is exhausted and anguished.

She and her husband, Yehuda Cohen, were supposed to meet with the defense minister Tuesday, Cohen said, but he canceled the meeting.

She also spoke about the latest sign of life of Nimrod, spotted in a Hamas video released March 1. His brother, Yotam, first saw the video on Telegram channel and identified Nimrod by his tattoo, an image of a crow that he got three days before October 7, 2023, when he was taken hostage.

“It’s the first time we’re seeing his body, it’s crazy, I wouldn’t have identified him by his body, but it’s a good thing he got that tattoo,” she added.

With Ben Baruch and Cohen were Shaul Levy, grandfather of released hostage Naama Levy, and Jucha Engel, grandfather of freed captive Ofir Engel.

“This nation can’t have a resurrection until all the hostages are back,” Levy said, to the applause of the crowd. “Everyone talks about solidarity, but we’re not a nation without everyone back home.”

Engel, a regular feature at many rallies and protests, talked about the family’s process of obtaining Dutch citizenship for Ofir when he was still a hostage because of Jucha Engel’s mother, who was Dutch.

He mentioned the steady support the family received from the Dutch government throughout Ofir’s 50 days of captivity and for the other hostages, as compared to the Israeli government, which has never contacted the family to see how they are, until now.

“Now we’re trying all the time to convince the government, the decision-makers,” Engel said. “God almighty, it can’t be that after 536 days there are still 59 Israelis held captive there, it doesn’t make sense. It’s not Jewish, it’s not Israeli, it’s a great danger for the future of our society.”

Terror groups in the Gaza Strip still hold 59 hostages, including 58 of the 251 abducted by Hamas-led terrorists on October 7, 2023.

They include the bodies of at least 35 confirmed dead by the IDF. Hamas released 30 hostages — 20 Israeli civilians, five soldiers, and five Thai nationals — and the bodies of eight slain Israeli captives during a ceasefire between January and March.

The terror group freed 105 civilians during a weeklong truce in late November 2023, and four hostages were released before that in the early weeks of the war.

In exchange, Israel has freed some 2,000 jailed Palestinian terrorists, security prisoners, and Gazan terror suspects detained during the war.

Eight hostages have been rescued from captivity by troops alive, and the bodies of 41 have also been recovered, including three mistakenly killed by the Israeli military as they tried to escape their captors and the body of a soldier who was killed in 2014.

The body of another soldier killed in 2014, Lt. Hadar Goldin, is still being held by Hamas and is counted among the 59 hostages.