In August 2006, Chief of Staff Dan Halutz contacted his investment manager at the Lev Dizengoff branch of Bank Leumi around noon on the day the war with Hezbollah broke out, and asked to sell his entire investment portfolio, NIS 120,000, which was managed at the branch. On Saturday night, Halutz had to be removed physically by police when he blocked the road outside Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s home in Caesaria, while Israel was bracing for an all-out war against Hezbollah. Both incidents, although 18 years apart, show Dan Halutz’s approach to war is always about personal leverage.
המפגינים בקיסריה, בהם הרמטכ”ל לשעבר דן חלוץ וגיל דיקמן, בן דודה של כרמל גת שנרצחה בשבי חמאס, נשכבו על כביש הגישה לבית רה”מ וחסמו אותו. המשטרה פינתה אותם בכוח
(אורלי אלקלעי, צילום: בני משי) pic.twitter.com/neOl4f14zv— כאן חדשות (@kann_news) September 21, 2024
A few thousands protested Saturday night in Tel Aviv calling for the return of the hostages against the background of the escalation in the north, which involved an upgrading of the preparedness directives of the Home Front Command and the expectation of a step up from Hezbollah. The speakers each repeated the mantra: “Netanyahu, you have no mandate to abandon the hostages under the auspices of the war in the north.”
Only an estimated half of the actual families of the hostages participated in the various rallies. In a vote that was taken by the group of left-leaning families, a reported 70% supported rallying even as the war with Hezbollah was brewing, and the rest either voted against or abstained. But, of course, there’s a second forum of hostage families comprising about one-third of the overall number, who have been against demonstrating from the start.
After the rally in Tel Aviv ended, the protesters lit the traditional bonfires on the streets, which the police had to put out. Several hundred protesters then marched from the Begin-Shaul Hamelech intersection to the north, and later turned west to Pinkas Street, the residence of MK Gideon Sa’ar, a favorite protest spot since Netanyahu has reportedly offered Sa’ar to replace Yoav Gallant as defense minister. Ilana Grichevski, the partner of the hostage Matan Tsengauker, lit a torch there.
Outside Sa’ar’s home, the protesters sprayed the graffiti of the struggle for the return of the hostages, next to the inscription “Thou shalt not abandon,” which isn’t a commandment, but sounds like one. The police allowed them to march, but outside Sa’ar’s house, they detained Shahar Mor (Zahiro), the nephew of the hostage Avraham Mundar. Protesters were thrown to the pavement by policemen and mounted officers when they tried to block the police vehicle from driving off with the arrested protester. Later, the police announced that they had arrested a protester on Namir Road on suspicion of “rolling a tire into the procession” to set it on fire.
It’s crucial to point out that despite the noisy and colorful hoopla on mainstream Israeli media, the protesters in Tel Aviv numbered only very few thousand (see the picture above), and elsewhere mere hundreds, as the majority of Israelis either didn’t believe that Saturday night was an appropriate time to demonstrate against the war in Gaza while the IDF is attacking Hezbollah in Lebanon.
