A crowd of hundreds from all over the country attended a Hanukkah candle-lighting ceremony and prayer in front of Ayalon Prison Saturday night, calling for the release of intelligence officer Ari Rosenfeld.
מאות מול כלא איילון בקריאה לשחרר את הנגד ארי רוזנפלד pic.twitter.com/kvUjdRjXpe
— ינון מגל (@YinonMagal) December 28, 2024
Rosenfeld was arrested on November 3 and questioned on suspicion of leaking to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu a Hamas document the IDF brass had been keeping hidden, and an indictment was filed against him. Also, until about a week ago, his name was under a gag order, but his defense attorneys demanded that his identity be revealed.
The document indicated that Hamas’s strategy was based on psychological pressure on the families of the hostages to increase public pressure on the Israeli government, exhaust Israel’s political and military resources, and increase international pressure on the Israeli side.
שמואל, אביו של הנגד ארי רוזנפלד, בהדלקת הנרות מול כלא איילון: אנו מדליקים חנוכיה כדי לגרש את החושך. pic.twitter.com/eL2q5dk6Bw
— שילה פריד?? (@shilofreid) December 28, 2024
Ari’s wife, Avital Rosenfeld, spoke at the event and said: “This morning our little Evyatar stood in front of the door and said: ‘Dad will be here soon.’ I am addressing all decision-makers in the judicial system and the State Attorney’s Office, asking them to agree to Ari’s release home. People from all corners of the nation are saying, it’s time to release Ari.”
Many cabinet ministers and lawmakers participated in the event, some of whom spoke. Among them were Ministers Amichai Chikli, Idit Silman, Deputy Minister Avi Maoz, MKs Yitzhak Pindarus, Arik Kelner, Hanoch Milbitsky, and Amit Halevi. The rally was also attended by hostage families of bereaved families, including Zvika Mor, father of Eitan, and Galia Hoshen, mother of Hadar, who was murdered in Nova.
On December 18, as his physical condition continued to deteriorate in prison, where he has been since his arrest on November 3, reservist NCO Ari Rosenfeld submitted a request for clemency from President Yitzhak Herzog.
The request, which was submitted by his family through his attorneys, stated that his case “presents special personal, legal, and public circumstances that require the intervention of the President with his immediate pardon, even before the legal proceedings in his case have concluded.”
The lawyers noted in the pardon request that he was being held in difficult and humiliating conditions and that “failure to stop the snowball rolling in his case will lead to distrust and an unprecedented rift between the public and the legal and enforcement system, to the point where the public may fear that extraneous and irrelevant considerations are being used in the matter. All of this is on our minds as a society, and in light of this, we will request his pardon from the President now.”
Supreme Court Justice Alex Stein ruled on December 9 that Eli Feldstein, a spokesman for Netanyahu, would be released to electronically monitored house arrest, but the Intelligence Division’s NCO Ari Rosenfeld, who was accused alongside him in the classified information leak affair, would remain in detention until a different decision is made in his case. This was decided as part of an appeal hearing filed by the prosecution after the Tel Aviv District Court decided to release the two to house arrest.
On September 6, the German newspaper Bild published content from a secret document that described Hamas’s negotiating strategy with Israel. The report stated that a document found on a computer that apparently belonged to Yahya Sinwar––then head of Hamas’ political bureau––contained instructions for reaching a ceasefire that was personally approved by Sinwar. According to the document, Hamas did not seek to quickly end the war but rather sought to improve the terms of the agreement, even if this would lead to a prolongation of the conflict.
