update desk

Protesters outside Netanyahu’s office denounce hostage deal

Hostage families, bereaved parents and IDF reservists call to free every captive by vanquishing Hamas.

"You Don't Have a Mandate to Surrender to Hamas," the large banner reads, as Israelis march outside Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's Office in Jerusalem to protest against the ceasefire with Hamas, on Jan. 16, 2025. Photo by Yonatan Sindel/Flash90.
"You Don't Have a Mandate to Surrender to Hamas," the large banner reads, as Israelis march outside Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's Office in Jerusalem to protest against the ceasefire with Hamas, on Jan. 16, 2025. Photo by Yonatan Sindel/Flash90.

With chants such as “We want the hostages back, but in an agreement of victory, not surrender!” relatives of captives held in Gaza from the Tikva Forum and bereaved families from the Heroism Forum led a mass protest outside the Prime Minister’s Office in Jerusalem on Thursday evening.

Representatives of the families took to the podium to decry the proposed hostages-for-ceasefire-and-terrorists-release deal, describing it as “dangerous” and “a surrender to terrorists.”

“We all want the hostages home,” one of the organizers told the crowd. “Every Jew in the world wants the hostages home, but not at the cost of countless more deaths of Israelis, civilians and soldiers alike, who will be killed as a result [of the release of more than a thousand terrorists]. We want them home, but not at this price.”

Representatives of the Nachala Movement and numerous others were also present, condemning what they said would be the severe harm to the remaining hostages and the security of the State of Israel if the proposed deal is implemented.

Rabbi Eliav Turgeman a major in the IDF reserves who served more than 200 days in Gaza in the past 15 months, told the protesters: “We can’t run a country based on our emotions. We are looking at a terrible agreement in which we will only receive some of the hostages, and this is a surrender by Israel. Decisions need to be made by using our logic, and this deal is illogical. We are an eternal nation who relies on God, not on foreign leaders, not [President Joe] Biden, and not [President-elect Donald] Trump.”

Yitzchak Fitusi, father of slain Golani Brigade soldier Staff Sgt. Yishay Fitusi, told the assembly that his family was expelled from Gaza as part of the disengagement 19 years ago.

Yishay, who was 3 years old at the time, returned to Gaza, and fought and died one kilometer away from the same piece of land that he was kicked out of, while fighting to protect the IDF’s Nahal Oz Base on Oct. 7, 2023, the bereaved father said.

Fitusi calling on the government and on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu: “Don’t agree to this deal. Don’t agree to a deal that will release thousands of terrorists. A released terrorist is tomorrow’s murderer. Back and empower the IDF to finish the job it started.

“Do not accept any agreement that brings back only some of the hostages. We can’t do selection of lives and which mother will see the return of her child while other mothers won’t. Make one agreement that brings them all home, that returns security to Israel and from a position of strength,” Fitusi said. 

Daniella Weiss, founder of the Nachala Movement and a former mayor of Kedumim, told the crowd, “Netanyahu, look around you. All of our enemies are happy because we are surrendering in this deal. Trump promised hell to pay to Gaza, and Netanyahu is allowing hell to take place here in Israel.”

Tzvika Mor, father of kidnapped Eitan Mor, who had spent the first nine hours of Oct. 7 rescuing people from the Supernova music festival where he had been working as a security guard, before he was kidnapped and taken hostage, told the crowd, “We need to release all of the hostages, but if we don’t do it in the proper way, then other civilians in this country will pay the price, just like we are paying the price today for the Gilad Shalit agreement [when Israel freed 1,027 terrorists in exchange for solider Shalit in 2011].”

We need “to free the hostages in a way where only the enemy pays the price. That is a deal of victory. That is a deal where we can release the hostages while caring for the security of the people of Israel in the present and in the future,” Mor said.

“Who would have believed after what we saw on October 7, that we would accept such a ceasefire deal and surrender to the enemy? We all thought that this would be it and we would go the distance to finish the job and ensure the protection of Israel in the future, that these games would end. But that apparently is not the case.

“The selection you are making today, of which hostages to release and which will stay, is signing a death warrant for those who stay behind. I call on the government to reject this deal and bring the hostages home in the proper way,” Mor said.

Topics