- Freed captives say everyone must return; Rom Braslavski says he saw Hostages Square on TV in Gaza, longed to get there; Golan: Anti-government movement to ‘take it up a notch’ against PM
2025. (Lior Rotstein/Hostages and Missing Families Forum)
Recently freed captives pressed for the return of the deceased hostages’ bodies still held in Gaza at a thousands-strong rally Saturday night, many of whom were speaking for the first time in Tel Aviv’s Hostages Square.
The rally took place as Hamas claimed to have recovered the body of Lt. Hadar Goldin, an IDF soldier who was killed and abducted by the terror group during the 2014 Gaza war, though there wasn’t immediate word on when it would be returned to Israel for identification.
The Palestinian terror group seeks to use his remains as leverage to pressure Israel into granting safe passage to Hamas terrorists holed up in a tunnel under Rafah, controlled by the IDF, Channel 12 reported. The matter has been subject to debate for several days, and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has previously ruled out letting them leave peacefully.
Goldin is one of the five abductees whose remains are still in Gaza, alongside four hostages — three Israelis and a Thai — kidnapped in the October 7, 2023, Hamas onslaught that started the war. The current US-brokered ceasefire saw the return of the last 20 living hostages and required the terror group to hand over all the 28 hostages’ bodies it had been holding as soon as possible. The remains of 23 of them have been gradually returned since, with Israel accusing the group of deliberately stalling.
Addressing the crowd on Saturday, ex-hostage Nimrod Cohen said he was certain Hamas knows where the deceased hostages’ remains are and accused them of withholding them in violation of the truce deal.
“I have no doubt Hamas knows where they are and is just enjoying playing this messed-up game,” said Cohen, speaking onstage alongside his mother and brother. “Every day that passes is another day where one of them could disappear forever.”
“I call from here on decision-makers: Just like I came back and like my whole crew came back, everyone has to come back,” he said. Cohen is the only surviving member of his four-man tank crew. The other three have been brought back for burial.
“When I was in hell in Gaza, in the tunnels,” he said, his captors “kept on telling us that the people of Israel gave up on us. That nobody is going out to protest and fight for us. That life is going on and nobody cares.”
“But the day we came home, the moment I crossed the border back into the country, I realized it was all lies,” said Cohen, recalling the thousands of people he saw lining the streets and applauding the return of the last 20 hostages.
Elad Or, the remains of whose brother Dror are still in Gaza, called for the swift completion of the truce-hostage deal that US President Donald Trump brokered.
“A month has passed since the signing of the Trump agreement. A month-long emotional rollercoaster; a month-long start to rehabilitation; a month, even at the end of which the mission remains incomplete,” he said.
He called for the deal to keep being implemented “without threats of war and without politics,” saying he came to the plaza to demand “our basic right to say goodbye to Dror and honor him.”
“The agreement is the Trump agreement,” he said. “Even if the searches” for deceased hostages’ remains “take a long time because of the massive destruction in Gaza, even if complex international cooperation is required, even if there are other obstacles — there’s no other choice. Israel needs Dror — everyone — home.”
“We won’t forgive and won’t forget the abandonment by this government, and we won’t stop demanding that the truth be unearthed and those responsible held to account,” he said. “But now, right now, there is a window of opportunity for a modicum of mending.”
‘It’s my dream’ to get to Hostages Square
Former hostage Rom Braslavski, one of the last 20 living hostages who returned on October 13 as part of the Gaza ceasefire, got up for an impromptu speech during the night, accompanied by his father onstage.
“My heart is pounding,” he said. “I can’t believe I’m in the place that I used to see on television in Gaza and say, ‘it’s my dream to get there.’”
He thanked the audience for fighting for him, and paid tribute to the troops “who went into Gaza knowing they might die, so that I can live.
He also expressed regret to the families of hostages held before the current Gaza war — including IDF navigator Ron Arad, who went missing in Lebanon in 1986 — “and all those who were forgotten and whom nobody rescued for years on end.”
“It’s time to save everyone left behind in Gaza,” he said. “Even if it takes 20-30 years, we’ll keep fighting for everyone,” he said.
Though they did not give speeches to the crowd, twins Gali and Ziv Berman, also among the last 20 living hostages released by Hamas, visited Hostages Square for the first time.
Photos published by the Hostages and Missing Families Forum showed the brothers grinning widely as they clutched one of their hostage posters. In one of the photos, Gali sat on Ziv’s shoulders as they celebrated.
Police seize megaphones, drums at anti-government protest
As thousands gathered in Hostages Square, anti-government protesters held a separate protest at the Begin-Kaplan interchange, not far from the plaza.
Mounted officers and police trucks deployed to the area and quickly began ordering the marchers on Kaplan to move onto Begin to clear the junction. A commander also ordered his officer to confiscate the megaphones and drums of anyone who failed to comply.
As officers snatched a woman’s megaphone, protesters chanted: “Where were you in Sde Teiman,” referring to the police’s failure to arrest members of a right-wing mob that stormed the southern detention facility last summer over the arrest of reserve soldiers accused of severely abusing a Gazan detainee.
Once protesters moved onto Begin Road, The Democrats party chief Yair Golan declared to the crowd that he and his political allies would “take it up a notch” in the struggle to replace the government, within the confines of the law.
“We’ll give the government a single choice: elections, as fast as possible, on our terms,” he said.
He also called on State Ombudsman for Judges Asher Kula, who was tapped by the government over the past week to investigate the Sde Teiman leak affair in an attempt to bypass Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara, not to take part in efforts to curb the legal system’s powers.
“History will remember who prevented the coup and who served it. The choice is yours,” said Golan. “Tonight, the fight begins for the democratic and Zionist soul of the State of Israel, and I guarantee, the State of Israel will remain a democracy. Period,” he continued.
He claimed that the current right-wing government is “the most pressing existential threat to the State of Israel.”
Golan announced, to applause, that from the rally he was heading to “a meeting of the opposition heads,” referring to leaders of Zionist parties opposed toNetanyahu. “We’ll fight until we win,” he said. “I promise you, we’ll win.
BY: The Times Union
