Car rams protesters, wounding 5, as large crowds demand hostage deal in Tel Aviv

Marking six months since Hamas’s October 7 onslaught, demonstrators turned out Saturday night for weekly rallies across Israel to protest against the current government, demand elections and an immediate hostage deal, Report informs via The Times of Israel.

Tel Aviv’s massive anti-government rally, which was attended by tens of thousands of protesters, saw some demonstrators skirmish with police, with at least five arrests.

There was also a car-ramming in the city that injured five demonstrators, an incident that drew broad condemnations and concerns over deepening societal tensions as the war launched in response to the Hamas attack grinds on.

The higher turnout in Tel Aviv this week prompted organizers to hold the protest at Democracy Square, the intersection of Begin and Kaplan Streets, which last year became iconic for its role as the backdrop to the anti-judicial overhaul protests each Saturday night prior to October 7.

According to an estimate by Channel 13 news , some 45,000 people protested in Tel Aviv on Saturday night, while organizers claimed 100,000 were in attendance. Thousands more joined the call for new elections in Jerusalem, Haifa and some dozens of other cities and towns across the country, including Caesarea, where protesters rallied outside Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s private home.

In Tel Aviv, swaths of protesters carrying Israeli flags and signs against the current government chanted “Elad, we’re sorry,” mourning slain hostage Elad Katzir, whose body was recovered in an operation announced by the IDF earlier in the day. The army said Katzir was murdered in mid-January by Palestinian Islamic Jihad.

Among the speakers addressing the protesters demanding early elections at Democracy Square were survivors and witnesses of the Hamas-led October 7 atrocities, in which Palestinian terrorists killed 1,200 people and took 253 hostages, about 130 of whom remain in Gaza, not all of them alive.