Hadash MK Ofer Cassif attacked far-right Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Saturday, April 6, after the confirmation of the hostage Elad Katzir’s death in captivity. In response to Katzir’s sister’s confirmation of her brother’s death, Cassif posted on the social media platform X, “Netanyahu is slowly killing the hostages, consciously!”

On Saturday evening, in Tel Aviv, swaths of protesters carrying Israeli flags and signs against the far-right government chanted “Elad, we’re sorry,” mourning the dead hostage, whose body was recovered in an operation announced by the Israeli army earlier in the day. The army said Katzir was murdered in mid-January by Palestinian Islamic Jihad. “Elad, we’re sorry we didn’t push harder, that we stayed at home, that we didn’t turn the world upside down,” the protester leading the chant cried.

In Haifa, Carmit Palty Katzir, the sister of Elad Katzir, gave a speech in which she blamed the government for the death of her brother. The People’s Protest, a Haifa group behind the march, published her statement on Facebook just ahead of the demonstration.

“Hostages, refugees, soldiers and government – go home”, demonstrators in Eilat, Saturday evening, April 6, 2024 (Photo: Black Flag Protest)

“The prime minister, members of the war cabinet, and members of the coalition, look at yourselves in the mirror, and ask yourselves whether it was not your hand that spilled that blood. You still have 133 hostages to redeem — worlds to save,” she wrote. Katzir was a 47-year-old farmer from kibbutz Nir Oz.

On Sunday evening during a mass demonstration held near the Knesset in Jerusalem, large sections of the crowd repeatedly broke into chants against Netanyahu, eschewing the organizers’ staunch refusal to take a partisan stance and reflecting growing frustration among many over the government’s inability to negotiate freedom for the captives — 129 of those kidnapped on October 7 and four others held by Hamas for nearly a decade. The number includes the remains of over two dozen captives Israel believes to be dead.

During a speech by Jerusalem Mayor Moshe Lion, protesters drowned him out with cries of “Deal now!”  The anti-government tone intensified as Yehuda Cohen, father of the captive soldier Nimrod Cohen, tore into the government, calling on Netanyahu to resign. Swaths of the crowd jeered with each mention of Netanyahu’s name. “We are facing a criminal government that isn’t doing anything for the return of our loved ones,” he said, to cries of “shame” from the crowd of estimated 50,000 participants who demonstrated outside the Knesset, according to organizers representing the families of hostages.

Related: https://maki.org.il/en/?p=31733