Hostage Families March for Action

Family members of the hostages are marching from the Begin Gate to the Histadrut building in Tel Aviv, demanding Histadrut Chairman Arnon Bar David to shut down the economy in order to put pressure on the government to advance a hostage deal.

Demonstrators at the march chanted, "Bar David, wake up. Everything is crumbling around you!"

Concurrently, thousands joined a rally in Hostage Square, which was defined as a "unity rally." Israel's Ashkenazi chief rabbi, David Lau, family members, and artists, including Shuli Rand and Yonatan Razel, as well as the secretaries of the youth movements, will attend the rally, according to Israeli media.

Rabbi David Lau said at the rally, alluding to the divide in Israeli society, "There is no right, no left, no religious, traditional, secular—we all want to see everyone at home."

Earlier, family members of hostages held by Hamas sent a letter to Histadrut labor federation chair Arnon Bar-David, asking him to call for a strike that would shut down Israel's economy and apply "any pressure possible" to return the hostages.

The hostage families also announced that they intended to gather outside the Histadrut to call for the release of the hostages and invited Bar-David to join them.

"We, families of the hostages signed below, turned to you, Mr Arnon Bar-David, because the negotiations are stuck, and this may cost the hostages in Hamas captivity their lives," reads the letter, signed by over 100 family members.

The families signed do not see themselves as belonging to any particular political "side" but turned to Bar-David from "the basic desire to save our loved ones from horrible torture, abandonment, and death."

"Unfortunately, the Israeli government has failed thus far to bring back all the hostages," said the families.