Hundreds gathered outside the IDF’s Tel Aviv headquarters on Saturday evening for the weekly protest demanding a hostage deal, as many of the captives’ families leading the demonstration marked 400 days since their loved ones were abducted.
The crowd appeared slightly larger than in recent weeks. This weekend’s rally on Begin Road was the first since the major one that spontaneously unfolded on Tuesday after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu fired Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, who was considered a proponent for a hostage deal.
While weekly protests earlier on in the war attracted thousands, Home Front Command restrictions put in place in September cap such gatherings at 2,000 people.
A massive sign reading “Why are they still in Gaza? 400 days” hung from the pedestrian overpass down to street level, while big white cardboard letters on the street spelled out: “400 days — the shame of Netanyahu.”
Though overtly partisan politics are usually absent from the Begin Street protest, the youth wing of the opposition Yesh Atid party set up an informational stand by the demonstration.
A block away, some 500 people assembled at Hostages Square for the main weekly rally organized by the Hostages and Missing Families Forum.
With a band of mothers clad in white, Niva Wenkert, the mother of hostage Omer Wenkert, kicked off the rally with a call to join “Shift 101,” a silent protest group.
Demonstrators calling for the release of Israeli hostages held in the Gaza Strip outside protest in Tel Aviv, November 9, 2024. (Itai Ron/Flash90)
After Wenkert, actor Lior Ashkenazi, the regular MC at the forum’s rallies, spoke against the government’s politicking at home while the captives have languished in Gaza. He noted that Saturday’s rally fell on the 86th anniversary of Kristallnacht, drawing a direct line between the Nazi pogrom and Hamas’s actions on October 7, 2023.
Steffen Seibert, Germany’s ambassador to Israel, also spoke at the rally, saying in Hebrew that for some Israeli politicians, “the fate of the hostages is just one of the [war’s] aims, and certainly not the primary one” — a not so subtle shot at members of Netanyahu’s hardline government.
Seibert added that he was speaking “as the representative of Germany and out of responsibility” to hostages with German citizenship. “I must admit that until now, we have failed to bring everyone home. All the talks with those who have influence on Hamas” have failed to materialize.
Naming hostages who have German citizenship or are related to German citizens, Seibert said: “These are Germans, or family members of Germans, and we want them back.”
Saturday’s rally featured a wide spectrum of speakers representing the various factions supporting a hostage deal.
Following Seibert was Dolan Abu Salah, the mayor of Majdal Shams in the Golan Heights where 12 children were killed in a July Hezbollah rocket attack; Rabbi Avidan Friedman, a settler from Efrat who led a hunger strike in front of the Knesset to demand a hostage deal; and journalist Shai Golden, whose departure from the right-wing Channel 14 drew rebukes from Netanyahu loyalists.
Demonstrators calling for the release of Israeli hostages held in the Gaza Strip outside protest in Tel Aviv, November 9, 2024. (Itai Ron/Flash90)
“I consider myself right-wing,” Golden said, “but I don’t come here as a right-winger — I come as an Israeli,” arguing that the IDF will continue fighting “the Nazis of Hamas” for generations to come but that the government must sign a hostage deal immediately even if that means ending the war.
“What has gone wrong with your Jewish conscience, Mr. Prime Minister?” he asked. “Send your negotiating team wherever is necessary and say to them a single sentence: don’t you dare come back without a hostage deal.”
Friedman noted that in the past week’s Torah portion, the patriarch Abraham goes to war to save his hostage nephew Lot. “Then, as now, the foremost fight of our existential struggle is to rescue all of the hostages,” he said.
Protests calling for the release of hostages were also held Saturday evening in Jerusalem and Beersheba with hundreds in attendance at both.
It is believed that 97 of the 251 hostages abducted by Hamas on October 7 remain in Gaza, including the bodies of at least 34 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 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.
