Israeli hostage families call for nationwide walkout to demand ceasefire

Jerusalem: Families of Israeli hostages held in the Gaza Strip have appealed for a nationwide labor strike Sunday to demand a ceasefire agreement with Hamas to free their relatives, even as Israel's government has moved to expand the nearly two-year military campaign in the enclave.

"Silence enables their sacrifice on the altar of an endless war without purpose or goal," said the Hostage Families Forum, an advocacy group. "This is the time for everyone to join us, across the entire country."

The call to shut down businesses and schools came after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced plans to expand operations in Gaza. Last week, the Israeli security Cabinet authorized a proposal to "take over" Gaza City, where hundreds of thousands of Palestinians are sheltering.

In Tel Aviv on Tuesday, reserve and retired Israeli air force pilots gathered outside the military's headquarters to make their own call for an end to the war. It was the largest anti-war protest involving former and reserve military aviators to date, with nearly 500 confirmed attendees, according to Guy Poran, a former pilot and one of the protest organizers.

It was unclear how many Israelis would join the work stoppage that the families of the hostages called for. The country's largest labor association, the Histadrut, has already ruled out participating. The union joined a previous strike last year that did not fundamentally sway government policy.

"Unfortunately, and although my heart is bursting with anger, it has no practical outcome," Arnon Bar-David, the Histadrut leader, said in a statement Monday explaining its position.

Hamas and its allies abducted about 250 people in the Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel to use living hostages and the bodies of those who had died as bargaining chips. More than 100 were later returned in two short-lived ceasefires, and the Israeli military has recovered the bodies of others in Gaza.

The subsequent Israeli campaign in Gaza has killed more than 60,000 people, including thousands of children, according to Gaza health officials. Those figures do not distinguish between civilians and combatants.

About 20 living hostages and the bodies of some 30 others are believed to still be in Gaza. They include Evyatar David, whose family recently glimpsed him, starved and weak, in a Hamas hostage video, aggravating fears over the fates of the remaining captives.

It will most likely take weeks to call up enough reserve soldiers to take over Gaza City and to evacuate people living there, leaving time for efforts to secure a truce. But the relatives of the hostages fear the Israeli military will attack areas where their relatives are being held, putting their lives at risk.

Anat Angrest, whose son Matan was abducted, said at a news conference Sunday that the Israeli government could have brought him back "long ago." Matan Angrest, 22, was serving as an Israeli soldier near the Gaza border during the Oct. 7 attacks.

"The government has decided to send to conquer Gaza, to send soldiers near where Matan is being held," Angrest told reporters. "They're fighting to bring him back -- but in practice, they're putting both his life in danger and their own."

At the pilots' protest, some held signs with photographs of the hostages, and many wore shirts with slogans opposing the government and the war.

"These are people who spent their lives in military service and war," Poran said. "And if we say that the war must end," he added, "then I think it carries weight."

He said he fears an "illegitimate" war "will damage Israel for generations to come."

Eliezer Yaari, an activist, journalist, and retired pilot, said he was protesting to express concern about dire conditions in Gaza and the future of coexistence between Israelis and Palestinians. "We cannot discuss Israel's rehabilitation without discussing Gaza's," he said. "They are intertwined."

One reserve pilot, who asked to remain anonymous because of the sensitivity of his position, said he had spent hundreds of days on duty since the war began. He said he, too, was protesting the humanitarian crisis in Gaza, as well as the continued captivity of Israeli hostages.

Still, he said, he would continue serving if called up again, noting that it is up to political leaders, not soldiers, to decide when a war should end.

Others cited differing motivations. One former pilot said he was there to oppose the government's repeated orders to send soldiers into battle while exempting most of the ultra-Orthodox community from mandatory military service. He said that policy, which has long been contentious, could eventually erode cohesion in Israeli society.

Voices protesting the war in mainstream Israeli society have grown louder and more prominent lately. Hundreds of artists signed a petition to demand an end to the conflict earlier this month.

But the former pilots said their opposition remained far from the consensus.

Yaari said in Hebrew that though protests have limited impact, "there are moments when one must act alone."

In English, he added, "If you build it, they will come."