The families of hostages and their supporters protested Monday in front of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s residence in Jerusalem to mark a year and a half since the October 7, 2023, massacre.
Activists carried photos of the 59 hostages that remain captive in the Gaza Strip and began a roll call of their names at 6:29 a.m., the exact time that Palestinian terror group Hamas began its attack on the country.
Similar demonstrations were held outside the homes of several other cabinet ministers.
Organizers said the displays were intended as “a wake-up call,” the Ynet outlet reported.
Noting that the prime minister is abroad, they said in a statement, “It seems that the topic of the hostages has been pushed to the bottom of the national priority list.”
The demonstrations were taking place as a “reminder that there is nothing more pressing than returning all of the hostages,” they said.
Netanyahu is in Washington to meet with US President Donald Trump.
Upon his arrival late Sunday at Blair House, Netanyahu was met with a group of some 50 Israelis and American Jews, also protesting for the return of the hostages, Channel 12 reported.
The hostages were taken on October 7, when Hamas led thousands of terrorists in an invasion of southern Israel, killing 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and abducting 251 as hostages to the Gaza Strip.
A week-long ceasefire in November 2023 saw the release of over 100 hostages, mostly women and children. In January 2025, another ceasefire began, and during the following several weeks, dozens of hostages, alive and dead, were returned in small batches in return for boosted humanitarian aid to Gaza and over 1,000 Palestinian security prisoners held in Israeli prisons.
The sides had agreed to a three-phase ceasefire that would include the return of all hostages, end the war, and ensure a complete Israeli withdrawal from the Gaza Strip.
However, the truce collapsed after the first stage, after Israel refused to enter negotiations on the terms of the subsequent phases and resumed military operations in Gaza.
At the Jerusalem protest, Erez Adar, whose uncle Tamir Adar was murdered on October 7, urged the prime minister to reach a deal to free all the hostages in one go, a formula increasingly advocated by the families.
“It is the most important subject of the day. We need to return everyone, the living for rehabilitation and the dead for burial, for us to have a better future here,” he said.
Varda Ben Baruch, whose grandson Edan Alexander is still held hostage, evoked the coming Passover holiday, during which Jews read that “in every generation, a person must see himself as if he had come out of Egypt.”
“We say this in the Passover Haggadah. Now is your moment of truth,” she said, addressing Netanyahu. “You are in the United States, and you should sit there with President Trump and finish a deal for everyone to get home. We are expecting this.”
Critics accuse Netanyahu of restarting the war to satisfy the demands of far-right members of his coalition.
Families fear that the already precarious state of the living hostages is being made worse by the return to fighting.
Gil Dickmann, whose cousin Carmel Gat was murdered in captivity, warned that the remaining living hostages are in danger if action isn’t taken immediately for their release.
“President Trump — please. It’s been a year and a half,” he said. “There’s only one word possible to yell right now — enough, enough of this nightmare.”