Several dozen people, including Knesset members, gathered in front of the Prime Minister’s Office in Jerusalem on Sunday morning to demand that the war against Hamas be resumed until the complete destruction of the terror group.
“You are the most important asset to our country, because you are the ones who remind us that we went to war not only to bring back the hostages but also to restore security to the State of Israel,” Knesset member Orit Strook of the Religious Zionism Party told the protesters.
“We must completely destroy Hamas in Gaza,” she said.
Other Knesset members who spoke included MKs Amichai Eliyahu and Yitzhak Wasserlauf of the Otzma Yehudit Party, and Communications Minister Shlomo Karhi of the Likud Party.
The protest was organized by the Tikvah (“Hope”) Forum, a group composed of the friends and families of hostages, HaGevura (“The Heroes”) Forum, comprising families who lost loved ones during the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas invasion and the subsequent war, and the Din V’Tzedek (“Law and Justice”) Forum, which represents 150 families who lost loved ones at the Nova Music Festival massacre.
Itzik Fitoussi, a member of HaGevura Forum whose son Yishai fell at the Nahal Oz post on Oct. 7, 2023, told Israel’s Channel 14 that the government should raise the issue of Hamas’s violations at Sunday’s next Cabinet meeting... “to defeat Hamas, to bring security to the State of Israel as they promised.”
He said Israel evicted his family from the Gaza Strip in 2005 during the disengagement, in which 8,500 Jews were removed from the region.
“When we were expelled 20 years ago from Gush Katif... we were told, the first mortar that falls, we’ll have the legitimacy. We’ll respond with force. Security is in our hands. And we got Oct. 7,” Fitoussi said, adding that Israel can’t afford to wait for another Oct. 7.
Tzvika Mor of the Tikvah Forum, in announcing the planned protest on Saturday night, said his group never “for a moment” believed Hamas would honor the ceasefire deal or return all the bodies it had promised to send back under U.S. President Donald Trump’s 20-point plan.
Hamas was to return the bodies of 28 murdered hostages within 72 hours of Oct. 13, the day the ceasefire began. However, it has slow-walked the return of the bodies, in some cases returning remains that belonged to none of the 28.
“We don’t understand why the Israeli government is not responding,” Mor said, criticizing its failure to act.
He demanded that Israel defeat and dismantle the Hamas regime, force the return of all the bodies, and finish the war, according to the government’s original objectives.
