Protesters call for elections in Jerusalem, on Monday.Credit: Naama Grinbaum
Thousands of Israelis are protesting on Monday night in Jerusalem, demanding elections and the return of the hostages. Ex-deputy IDF chief Yair Golan spoke at the protest, and aid: "A direct line connects Oct. 7 to the failures of the Gantz-Netanyahu government, chief among them the abandonment of the hostages. We will not have a revival or reunification without their return as soon as possible."
Noga Friedman, the widow of an Israeli soldier, Ido Rosenthal, who was killed on Oct. 7, also spoke at the protest. "The voices that ask for silence in the name of unity and togetherness … when nothing is still right … are the voices that divide the people," she said. They "are the voices that spit on families of hostages for whom October 7 is a continuous present. They are the voices that want bereaved people like me to stay at home in order to turn a blind eye to the prices we paid."
Friedman called on the members of the Knesset to resign: "You have destroyed beyond repair everything that could have been brought to mind, and if you had any sense of responsibility, you would have left us to our own devices."
She also said it was important for her to say "that the destruction and poverty and hunger in Gaza are an atrocity… And one should not be proud of a moral collapse that celebrates blood, blood and more blood, in a cycle of revenge that has no end. Woe to the public in which it is forbidden to express human compassion, one that transcends tribal affiliation and, beyond masculine leadership, whose solution to the violence and humiliation we have experienced is only more and more destruction and power."