Hostage families and protesters blocked the Begin-Kaplan intersection Sunday morning, calling to bring the hostages home, just ahead of the year mark of their captivity and the October 7 attack.
Speaking at the protest, Gal Goren, whose father Avner was killed in the Hamas massacre and whose mother Maya Goren's body was recovered from Gaza, spoke at the protest, addressing Members of Knesset who he said had been supposed to attend a later cancelled Knesset discussion on victory.
"Are you sane? Talking about victory?" he asked. "When the last time Emma and Yuli saw David was in captivity? When Shahar Mazal has not yet met her dad Sagui? When Yale hasn't buried Tamir the hero?"
"We have been without strategy and direction for a year. Soldiers are falling for nothing. The evacuees can't go back to their homes in the North or South."
"The hostages are being murdered, and the blood is on your hands. And you dare to yap about victory?"
Ifat Kalderon, whose cousin Ofer Kalderon is still being held in Hamas captivity, also spoke at the protest.
"It is incomprehensible that we need to stand here and talk about how important it is to bring them back. It is incomprehensible that we need to explain again and again why they won't last there much longer," she said.
A year waiting for their return
The ongoing war is normalizing the situation of the hostages and the loss of importance of the value of human life, Kalderon added.
"Tomorrow will be October 7. Again. The stain on the legacy of [Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu has only grown and set in. He will be forever remembered as a leader who was not able to bring back hostages."
Naama Weinberg, whose cousin Itay Svirsky was killed in Hamas captivity, also spoke at the rally.
"We are standing today after a whole year has passed, and they are still there. A whole year has passed and it seems like the situation has only escalated."
"It is unimaginable that tomorrow we will mark an entire year of captivity for the hostages," the Women's Protest for the return of the Hostages who organized the protest, said.
"It seems that bringing back the hostages, which was once a central goal, is not even on the cabinet's table. Instead of bringing the hostages home in a deal and ending the war, the government and its head prefer to drag us all to political regional war," said the organization.m