The demonstrations against Benjamin Netanyahu are back, this time wrapped in calls for the release of the hostages held by Hamas.
Analysts tell JNS that protest organizers, many of whom, like former Prime Minister Ehud Barak, were behind the anti-judicial reform protests, are obsessed with bringing down the Netanyahu government to the exclusion of all else, endangering the war effort and the possibility of a hostage deal.
Since the start of the war, anti-government protests had quieted, only to burst out fiercely in Tel Aviv on Saturday night. Tens of thousands turned out, according to estimates, with protesters blocking the Ayalon Highway and accusing the country’s leadership of purposefully torpedoing a hostage deal.
Some hostages’ families, who joined the protests on Saturday, urged War Cabinet members Benny Gantz and Gadi Eizenkot of the National Unity Party to leave the government and “replace Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu immediately.”
Demonstrations shifted to Jerusalem on Sunday, turning violent on Tuesday night as a group, some bearing torches, evaded barricades and rushed Netanyahu’s official residence.
Police said the protest descended into “unrestrained disorder and street rioting” as “hundreds of rioters tried to break through by force the police barriers placed near the Prime Minister’s Residence.”
Some observers described speeches at the protest as “incitement.” Einav Zangauker, whose son Matan is held by Hamas, said of Netanyahu: “You are the traitor. You betrayed your people. You betrayed your voters. You betrayed the State of Israel.”
She labeled him a “Pharaoh who inflicts on us the plague of the firstborn.”
“We will continue to persecute you: we will burn the country down, we will shake the earth, you will not have a day and you will not have a night. As long as my Matan has no day and no night neither will you,” she said.
Not at any price
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Author: Ruth King
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