Narrative
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For the first time since October 7, the fight for the release of the hostages and the ouster of the government merged in Tel Aviv on Saturday. The hard right crossed a red line by desacralizing the Hamas captives.
The human tide demanding an agreement to release the 101 hostages (at least 35 of whom are already dead) still held in Gaza was the largest ever seen by Karin and Yair, who came to demonstrate in Tel Aviv on Saturday, as they do every week. “We couldn’t even make it to the stage,” “We are all in,” says a woman, half-smiling, half-tears, among half a million people crowding a few meters from the Israeli army headquarters in the coastal metropolis. If the figure, put forward by the organizers, is true, it would be the largest mobilization in the country’s history.
For the first time since October 7, the anti-government demonstration and the more solemn one in solidarity with the hostages merged. Up to 250,000 more people gathered in other cities across the country. It punctuated a week of daily actions, following last week’s shock, when six hostages were found executed in a tunnel in Gaza. On all the banners, in all minds, the same message: betrayal. By refusing to do what was necessary to reach an agreement with Hamas, by implicitly accepting the idea that the lives of the hostages were less important than a military victory (or their political salvation).
