‘They’re pawns in a horrible game’: Hostage rally highlights plight of daughters, sons
Mother of hostage Matan Zangauker issues appeal to Trump at gathering outside IDF headquarters; scuffles with counter-protester who blasts music in order to drown out families
Protesters gathered in Tel Aviv and across Israel Saturday evening to repeat their call for a deal to free hostages held by Hamas in Gaza, highlighting the plight of younger captives to mark International Children’s Day this week.
“Let me tell you about my children and their rights,” said Bat-Sheva Yahalomi, the wife of hostage Ohad Yahalomi, and mother of former hostage Eitan Yahalomi, who were abducted from their home in Kibbutz Nir Oz on October 7, 2023, and eventually freed.
Eitan, 12, was “held alone for 16 days, surrounded by armed terrorists, who told him that the State of Israel and Nir Oz are no longer,” said Yahalomi, speaking at Hostages Square in Tel Aviv during the Hostages and Missing Families Forum’s weekly rally.
Released after 52 days in captivity, Eitan has since suffered from nightmares and hair loss. “We’ll get over it, but that can happen only after his father and the rest of the hostages come back,” she said.
“The last image Eitan and his two sisters have of their father is the image of him fallen on the floor, injured and bleeding, after he left the safe room to protect them,” added Yahalomi.
“What about their right to a father? What about their right to just be children, their father’s child?”
Ofri Bibas, whose brother Yarden Bibas and Yarden’s wife Shiri and children Ariel, 5 and Kfir, 1, are all still held in Gaza, issued an appeal to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the rest of the government:
“I hear you saying that Ariel and Kfir are all of our children. But you wake up in the morning and you go to sleep at night knowing where your children are, knowing that they ate and drank today. That they’re healthy, that they’re safe. You know that they’re alive!”
For 407 days, said Ofri, “we don’t know” anything about the Bibas family. “If they do not return, all the children of Israel and their parents will know that you can kidnap children here and nobody will come to save them.”
Ofri added that more than a year has passed of broken promises and torpedoed deals: “Enough talk, it’s time for action. Ariel and Kfir need to be in a playground right now, running and playing. Instead, they’re pawns in a horrible game. You went to war in the name of Ariel and Kfir. Now your responsibility to them is to end the war and bring them home.”
Also speaking at the rally, Alon Nimrodi, the father of hostage Tamir Nimrodi, who was taken captive from his IDF base, said he is having trouble with one line of the national anthem, “Hatikva”: “To be a free nation in our land.”
“We’re not a free nation in our land,” he said. “One hundred and one hostages are out there in the gutter — how are we free, how?”
He said that this week, the family marked Tamir’s 20th birthday — his second birthday in captivity — by donating care packages to the needy, the homeless, at-risk youth and wounded soldiers.
Nimrodi said such charitableness aligns with his son’s values. “These values are absent among our decision-makers,” he said. “They have given up on the hostages.”
Earlier on Saturday evening, demonstrators scuffled with a counter-protester on Begin Road in Tel Aviv who blasted music in an attempt to drown out the statements of hostage family members to the press.
The disturbance occurred as the mother of hostage Matan Zangauker issued an appeal to US President-elect Donald Trump to immediately involve himself in the efforts to release the hostages.
“Netanyahu refuses to end the war,” Einav Zangauker said. “Do everything to end the war and bring back the hostages. They won’t survive until your inauguration in January.”
Toward the end of her statement, a man wearing a shirt reading “Lions of the Right” played music on a loudspeaker and entered into a shoving match with Natalie Zangauker, the sister of Matan, according to footage shared online by a Haaretz reporter.
אדם עם חולצה של ״אריות הימין״ הגיע מול הצהרת המשפחות בבגין, לקראת סיומה, עם מערכת הגברה והשמיע שירים בהתרסה. כשפעילים ועינב צנגאוקר הגיעו ודרשו מהשוטרים שילך משם. הוא סרב והחלו קללות ודחיפות כולל בינו לבין נטלי צנגאוקר ולפעיל נוסף שהגיע למקום להגן עליה. המשטרה שם, אבל שוטר אחד… pic.twitter.com/P3zvxSsCD6
— Bar Peleg (@bar_peleg) November 16, 2024
Police said in a statement that after an argument broke out over the music, police arrived at the scene, detained the man and confiscated his equipment.
The Begin Road rally is unaffiliated with the Hostages and Missing Families Forum and is frequented by families more openly critical of the government. Standing in front of the Defense Ministry headquarters, protesters demanded an end to the war as part of a hostage deal. They set off smoke stacks and beat on drums, chanting: “They’re running out of time — a deal is on the table!”
Rallies were also held across the country in Rehovot, Haifa, Ra’anana, Jerusalem and elsewhere, demanding a deal.
Also on Saturday evening, Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, one of the most vocal opponents of a hostage deal in government, told Channel 12 that the war in Gaza would not end until Hamas is “wiped out” and “no longer in existence,” but denied that this would prevent the hostages from ever returning home.
Asked why the government would not agree to a deal that would end the war in return for the release of all the hostages, Smotrich told Channel 12 that doing so “would mean [Hamas] retains control in Gaza.”
Smotrich, the head of the far-right Religious Zionism party, denied that this would mean the hostages would never return home, and stressed that the two goals of the war — to destroy Hamas and to bring home the hostages — must be accomplished. Only by accomplishing these goals, he explained, would Israel be able to ensure that there can be no repeat of October 7 and prove to its enemies that it has won.
“I won’t agree to a deal that ends the war,” he specified, rejecting the idea that if a ceasefire and hostage deal were agreed upon, the IDF would still be able to resume its fight against Hamas in Gaza at a later point. Ending the war would not be reversible, he said.
The far-right minister then elaborated on what he considers to be fulfilling the goals of the war as regards Hamas: “We will end this war when Hamas is wiped out, gone, destroyed, no longer in existence… there is no Hamas rule in the Gaza Strip.”
When it was again put to him that this would mean no return of the hostages, he replied: “When Hamas understands that it’s on its own, and there is no Hezbollah supporting it, and there is no Iran supporting it, and there’s a Trump in the White House who is going to give us absolute freedom of action…”
Interrupted by his hosts, Smotrich did not complete his sentence, but went on to say that if Israel were to “continue the effort in the Gaza Strip we will create… complete sterilization in northern Gaza, and, finally, alternative governance.”
Smotrich said he believes Israel should and will resume Jewish settlement in Gaza but notes that “settlement is not one of the aims of the war.”
More than a year after the October 7, 2023 attacks, 101 hostages are believed to still be held captive in Gaza, including the bodies of at least 34 confirmed dead by the IDF. Over the past year, 109 hostages have been released, eight were rescued alive and the bodies of 37 hostages have been recovered by troops.
