Families whose loved ones were either killed or taken hostage during Hamas’ 2023 attack arrived at Israel’s parliament, the Knesset, on Monday to demand Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu establish a state investigation into the country’s security failures — only for guards to beat them back with batons.
The bereaved families came to the Knesset to watch elected officials, including Netanyahu, debate the creation of a commission to investigate how the militant group was able to carry out its deadly attack in southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, in which about 1,200 people died, including members of the military, and around 250 were taken hostage.
Most of the families on Monday belonged to the October Council, a group that includes captives’ loved ones, Oct. 7 survivors and hostages who have since been freed. The group joins many other Israelis in calling for their government to establish such a commission – which Netanyahu has blocked – and expressing frustration with the prime minister, who they claim has prioritizedhis political careerover the remaining hostages’ safety.
“Mr. Prime Minister, you and your government have yet to take responsibility. So many civilians are asking for forgiveness, and so few politicians are asking for forgiveness,” recently freed hostage Yarden Bibas wrote in a letter read aloud on the Knesset’s floor by lawmaker Chili Tropper. The letter said that 83% of Israeli citizens want a state commission, including the October Council’s 1,500 families.
“I am constantly thinking and regretting that I did not protect my wife and children better. It eats me up inside. I only had a gun and I am a simple citizen in a quiet kibbutz,” Bibas, whose family died in captivity, continued. “Do you think about this? Do you also find it difficult to spend days and nights without a heavy sense of responsibility for what happened?”
Security guards blocked the families from entering the Knesset chamber’s public gallery, agitating the crowd holding photos of their loved ones and turning the interaction into a shouting match. Eventually, the guards attacked them.
Footage from journalists who were at the scene, like Haaretz, showed people screaming as guards shoved them to the ground and beat some with batons. Security reportedly dragged hostage Matan Angrest’s father across the floor and threw his grandfather down the stairs. A man whose child was killed in the Nova music festival attack fainted.
“The violence directed at us is unacceptable. Today we also feel the government violence on our bodies, the same violence that tries to prevent us from answering for the failure that led to the deaths of our loved ones,” the October Council said, according to a Hebrew translation.
“The speaker of the Knesset should resign today. By his order, bereaved families are now being beaten by the Knesset Guard,” it continued. “The entire State of Israel is ashamed.”
Neither the prime minister’s office nor spokespeople for the Knesset immediately responded to HuffPost’s request for comment.
Knesset Chairman Amir Ohana later allowed the families to enter the viewing gallery before ordering that they be kicked out for turning their backs to the chamber floor in protest. But demonstrators still witnessed Netanyahu spiral into anger over the demands for an inquiry — accusing the media and opposition leaders of spreading a “false campaign” that “the government is sabotaging the [ceasefire] deal.”
“We demand the establishment of an objective, balanced, independent, non-politically biased investigative committee — not a committee whose conclusions are known in advance, have already been written and not without variety,” the prime minister shouted. “And not a narrow range of opinions of a quarter of a millimeter that are all concentrated at one end of the political network.”
Netanyahu’s tirade was shouted down by opposition leaders, to whom the prime minister responded, “You with your shouts, cannot hide the truth.”
Opposition leader Yair Lapid described Netanyahu’s speech as “a spectacle not easy to watch.”
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“The State of Israel is strong? You are responsible for the greatest disaster of the Jewish people since the Holocaust,” Rabbi Gilad Kariv, a Knesset member for the Democrats, an opposition party, yelled at Netanyahu before telling him to visit the kibbutz of Nir Oz, which was devastated in Hamas’ attack.
Protesters gathered outside Ohana’s home in Tel Aviv Monday night, in addition to the demonstrations Israelis have regularly held calling on the government to end the war in Gaza and bring home the remaining hostages.
“One thing is clear: nothing will deter us. We are wounded animals, and wounded animals are not to be messed with,” the October Council said. “We will continue to fight, the truth about the deaths of our loved ones and what led to it will be revealed. The day is coming when we will call on the public to join us in this just struggle.”