In the largest mass protests in Israel in months, tens of thousands of people demanded an end to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government and the release of hostages held in the embattled Gaza Strip. “Alive, alive – and not in body bags,” demonstrators chanted on Saturday evening in the coastal metropolis of Tel Aviv.
According to local media reports, the organizers spoke of around 150,000 participants. It was the largest demonstration in Tel Aviv since the Islamist Hamas terrorist attack in Israel on October 7 last year. There were also mass protests against Netanyahu’s leadership in Jerusalem, Haifa, Beersheba and other places. People loudly demanded new elections.
Yuval Diskin, former head of the domestic intelligence service Shin Bet, condemned the government at the rally in Tel Aviv and called Netanyahu “the worst and most failed prime minister in the history of the state,” the Times of Israel reported.
Diskin accused the government of mismanaging the war, “the lie of ‘total victory,’ the total evasion of responsibility” and the “destruction of our strategic relations with the United States.” Netanyahu’s government is “missing every opportunity to return our kidnapped brothers and sisters.”
The Wall Street Journal recently reported that the number of abductees still alive could be as low as 50. Officially, there are still around 120 hostages in Gaza. The demonstrators accused Netanyahu of bowing to the demands of his extremist coalition partners and thwarting a deal to release the hostages. Some ministers are against an agreement with the Islamists because it would also provide for a ceasefire and the release of Palestinian prisoners from Israeli prisons.
Meanwhile, Israel’s Defense Minister Joav Galant is expected to hold talks with the most important ally, the United States. He plans to meet with senior representatives of the Pentagon and the US State Department in Washington from this Sunday to Tuesday, the Jerusalem Post reported. Galant’s trip to the US comes after Israel’s Prime Minister Netanyahu caused a new crisis in relations with the US administration of President Joe Biden with a video in which he harshly attacked the US government over a withheld arms shipment.
According to local media reports, during the mass protests against Netanyahu’s government in Tel Aviv on Saturday evening there were scuffles with the police and several people were arrested. The police minister is the right-wing extremist politician Itamar Ben-Gvir. Mounted officers tried to disperse some of the demonstrators with their horses. The police violence during the demonstrations “exceeded all limits,” raged the new chairman of the opposition Labor Party, former Deputy Chief of General Staff Jair Golan, on Platform X.
Golan has been considered a hero in the country since the Hamas massacre on October 7. He went to the danger zone on his own and helped many civilians to escape from a festival that the terrorists were attacking. The terrorist attack was the trigger for the war. At the rally in Tel Aviv, many people remembered the birthday of a kidnapped soldier who turned 20 on Saturday while being held hostage.
Many displayed posters with the Israeli woman’s face. Her parents called for her release in a speech. Footage from the organizers showed the mother crying during the protest in Tel Aviv.