Thousands across Israel rallied for the hostages’ release and against the government on Saturday night, linking the plight of the hostages to the message of the quickly-approaching Passover holiday, set to begin Monday evening.

Demonstrators grappled with how to mark the weeklong Jewish holiday, which commemorates freedom with the story of the ancient Israelites’ exodus from slavery in Egypt, while 129 hostages are still held captive by terror groups in the Gaza Strip since Hamas’s October 7 massacre.

“It is incomprehensible that we have come to this holiday that represents freedom, and they [the hostages] aren’t here,” said Tom Barkai, an organizer with the Hostages and Missing Families Forum, to a solemn crowd in Jerusalem’s Paris Square next to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s official residence.

Hostage families protests in Tel Aviv, Haifa and dozens of other cities across the country echoed similar themes. In Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, many anti-government protesters merged with the Hostages Families Forum demonstrations, and vice versa, later in the night.

Recent weeks have seen an increasing convergence between the protests of the families and the mass anti-government demonstrations that were a weekly event in the months before October 7. Some of the families accuse Netanyahu of blocking a deal for political reasons.

In Jerusalem, hundreds convened outside the prime minister’s official residence around an hour after Shabbat’s end to demand a hostage deal.

“Does it even cross your minds how the families of hostages are going to deal with this holiday?” said Barkai, who gave the opening speech at the rally, to Israel’s politicians. “Instead of sitting at the Seder table, you should be sitting at the negotiating table.”

As she spoke, Barkai raised her left hand with the date 7/10 written on her palm.

Although speeches at weekly hostages’ rallies in Jerusalem tend to take a more critical tone towards Israel’s leadership than those in Tel Aviv, this particular evening took a turn when one of the speakers unequivocally called for the government’s ouster.

“The time for this government has run out, and they need to go,” said Eyal Eshel, whose 19-year-old daughter Roni Eshel, an IDF lookout, was killed on the Gaza border during Hamas’s onslaught on October 7. “This is the time for new leadership.”

The crowd met Eshel’s comments with enthusiastic agreement, chanting “shame” and demanding the prime minister’s resignation.

Shlomo Alfasa-Goren, a relative of murdered hostage Maya Goren, also had harsh words for Netanyahu’s right-wing ruling coalition.

“You abandoned [us], and you need to pay,” he said. “Reach an agreement, despite the difficult prices.”

Also speaking in Jerusalem was Rabbi Benny Lau, a prominent Orthodox leader, who attempted to answer a question that Barkai posed at the start of the rally, where she inquired who among the crowd intended to celebrate Passover.

Lau said that he indeed planned to sit at the seder night table, invoking the stories of his father, a Holocaust survivor, who marked the holiday in the ghetto, then later in Buchenwald concentration camp.

“In 1942, on the night of the seder, my father, 16 years old, sat at the table with his father. He spoke of that seder as quiet — part of the family was no longer there, and it was just a minute before the Final Solution. My grandfather, his father, was murdered soon afterwards,” said Lau. “We didn’t believe that we would tell these sorts of stories in our free country.”

“We are a nation that tells stories, in every situation,” he said, adding that this year, he planned to honor the hostages with an empty chair and by showing his grandchildren pictures of those still held captive by Hamas.

At the front of the march, protesters held a large banner with an excerpt from the hagaddah: “He [God] took us out from slavery to freedom, from sorrow to joy, from mourning to festival, from darkness to a great light, and from enslavement to redemption.” Under the quote in bold, black letters, read the words, “Deal now!”

After the speeches ended, protesters in Jerusalem marched from Paris Square to the President’s Residence for an anti-government protest organized by the group Safeguarding our Shared Home.

Professor Tsevi Mazeh, who won the Israel Prize in physics this year, invoked Passover with the assertion that Israeli citizens exist under the current government in “a state of slavery.”

“We are enslaved by a government that has no mandate, we are led by a government that has no way, we are enslaved by zealous messianics who want to drag us into the war of Gog and Magog,” he said.

At an anti-government protest in Tel Aviv’s Democracy Square, Hagit and Ruby Chen, parents of slain IDF soldier Itay Chen, said that they had received a call from US President Joe Biden after being notified last month that their son was killed on October 7 and his body held in Gaza, but they were never contacted by Netanyahu.

“How could it be that the country abandoned you and abandoned me?” Hagit Chen said through tears. “When will you bring me my child back?”

The protesters later congregated with the hostage families rally on Begin Street, and after organizers read out the names of all captives who remain the Gaza Strip, the unified group continued to march through some of Tel Aviv’s most bustling streets, urging bar-goers to join the demonstration.

Many protesters carried signs referencing the Passover Haggadah and the Four Questions, with one sign that read, “How is this government different from all others?”

Police dispersed the marchers at Dizengoff Center mall with light force, but made no arrests and issued no fines throughout the relatively calm night.

Further north, Opposition Leader Yair Lapid addressed an anti-government rally in Haifa on Saturday night, calling the government “a disaster that happened to the country.”

“You all came out after October 7 and you went and did everything that this government didn’t do. You took responsibility, each one in their community, you prepared food for evacuees and reservists, placed yellow ribbons for the hostages — you can be relied upon,” said Lapid.

The opposition leader added that he’s been asked why he has not joined the government amid the war and explained that he wants to get rid of the government rather than strengthen it.

“This is not the best that Israel can offer its citizens,” he continued. “For the hostages, we need elections now.”

In light of the upcoming Passover holiday, hostage rallies were held in 55 cities and towns across the country this week, all planned by the Families Forum.

At a protest outside Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s private residence in Caesarea, a speaker lamented that nothing feels like a holiday right now, and “certainly not a festival of freedom, when 133 of our brothers and sisters have spent more than six months in the tunnels of Gaza where they are assaulted, starved and raped.”

In Kfar Saba, speakers urged protesters to keep coming out to demonstrate, even during the Passover vacation. Demonstrators also gathered en masse in Beersheba, Rehovot, Ra’anana, Hod Hasharon, near Netanya and elsewhere.