By New York Post (World News) | Created at 2025-03-19 16:55:10 | Updated at 2025-03-20 15:51:12
22 hours ago
About 40,000 Israelis gathered in Tel Aviv’s Habima Square Tuesday night to protest Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s decision to return to war in Gaza and oust his top intelligence officer.
Protesters are accusing Netanyahu of abandoning the 59 hostages in Gaza by ending the cease-fire with Hamas, claiming the return to war and plans to fire Shin Bet Chief Ronen Bar — who was investigating alleged ties between Bibi’s aides and Qatar — are all politically motivated to reunite support from the fractured far-right and ensure his stay in power.
The crowd, one of the largest of the war-time demonstrations, dubbed Netanyahu “Mr. Abandonment” as they accused the embattled premier of being a “traitor” and a “dictator,” the Times of Israel reported.
The latest condemnation against Netanyahu began Sunday when he announced his plans to fire Bar, whose security service was investigating three of the prime minister’s aides for allegedly conducting illicit money transfers with Doha.
Netanyahu claimed he did not trust Bar and that his “distrust has grown over time,” with Bar suggesting his ouster was actually due to his commitment to remain unbiased in his probe and refusal to be loyal to the prime minister.
Bar had been in the crosshairs of far-right politician Itamar Ben Gvir, whose party resigned from Netanyahu’s cabinet in January in protest of the cease-fire with Gaza.
With the war back on and Bar’s termination at hand, Gvir is set to return to Netanyahu’s cabinet and bolster the prime minister’s support to survive a key budget vote in March that he likely would have lost if facing the opposition parties alone.
Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara, who ordered the investigation against Netanyahu’s aides, said Bar cannot be fired while the probe is active.
The criticisms against Netanyahu only grew louder on Tuesday when he announced that Israel would return to all-out war with Hamas following a series of airstrikes that Palestinian authorites claim killed more than 400 people in Gaza.
The premier accused Hamas of refusing to accept a US-backed deal to release more hostages in exchange for an extension of the first phase of the cease-fire rather than moving on to phase two.
The demonstrators in Tel Aviv joined the families of the hostages still being held in Gaza demanding the cease-fire be restored to ensure their loved ones’ safe release.
Many relatives and former hostages fear that a return to war only puts the captives, who have been in Gaza for 530 days, at risk of being killed by Hamas, starvation, or by a stray Israeli bomb.
Einav Zangauker, the mother of hostage Matan Zangauker and a vocal Netanyahu critic, called on demonstrators to camp outside the Israel Defense Forces’ Kirya headquarters to protest the return to war.
“Netanyahu didn’t open the gates of hell on Hamas,” she said, referencing President Trump’s threats against the terror group. “He opened the gates of hell on our loved ones.”
Out of the 59 hostages remaining in Gaza, at least 24 are believed to still be alive, with Hamas previously agreeing to free them all at once if Israel agrees to withdraw from the Palestinian enclave.
Netanyahu has vowed that the war will not end until Hamas is eliminated, with the prime minister adding that “negotiations will be conducted only under fire.”
With Post wires
