Activist At Loss Without Hostage Rallies To Hijack Against Bibi

For regular demonstrators, it represents something close to an existential career crisis.

Tel Aviv, February 4 – The screen in Hostage Square showing the number of days, hours and minutes with Israeli captives or their remains still missing in Gaza finally went dark last Tuesday after the IDF’s operation to retrieve Ran Gvili’s body – but for one protester and his friends, the moment proved more bitter than bittersweet, as it heralds the end of a time when he and his cohort could make it look like hundreds of thousands of Israelis stood with him against the incumbent prime minister, when in fact only a hardcore few linked two issues, and they must no reckon with the limited impact they will have with no consensus issue to coopt for their political purposes.

For a small but vocal group of regular demonstrators, it represents something close to an existential career crisis. Yair “Bibi Must Go” Cohen, 38, a fixture at the weekly protests outside the Kirya, arrived at the square shortly after sunset carrying what appeared to be the same folding table he has used since 2020, now repurposed with a new banner: “THE HOSTAGES ARE HOME — WHY IS HE STILL THERE?” The question mark was added in red marker, as though someone had second thoughts halfway through the stencil job.

“Look,” Cohen said, addressing a cluster of perhaps two supporters and three dozen television cameras, “nobody’s saying we’re not relieved the families have closure. But let’s not pretend this changes the bigger picture. The man still has corruption trials dragging on — bribery, fraud, breach of trust, the whole menu — and somehow he’s still sitting in the prime minister’s chair. If a ticking clock didn’t remove him, what will? A verdict that never quite sticks?”

“Protect Our Democracy!” opponents have, most inconveniently, failed to win elections.

Cohen declined to mention elections, which the prime ministers “protect our democracy” opponents have, most inconveniently, found all but impossible to win. After years of insisting that Netanyahu’s personal legal troubles were the root of every national ill — from security failures to stalled hostage deals — the same circles now find themselves without the one issue that reliably drew six-figure crowds and sympathetic international headlines.

The corruption cases, for their part, have proven stubbornly non-lethal to his political career. Indictments filed in 2019 have yet to produce a conviction; multiple delays, appeals, and procedural battles have stretched the proceedings into something resembling performance art rather than justice. Netanyahu remains, improbably, the longest-serving prime minister in Israel’s history.

Veteran observers of the anti-Bibi demonstrations note that the hostage crisis had functioned as the perfect moral solvent: it elided distinctions between single-issue grief and broad-spectrum regime change advocacy. Placards demanding “Deal Now” shared space with those calling for “Elections Now,” and the sheer emotional weight of captive Israelis made any attempt to separate the two causes seem churlish. With that solvent gone, the remaining ingredients — coalition arithmetic, attorney-general friction, and the slow drip of courtroom testimony — have so far failed to produce the same spontaneous mass outrage.

The square, for the first time in years, felt almost ordinary again: a few scattered tents, a portable sound system playing soft protest anthems to no one in particular, and the faint glow of smartphones as the remaining activists scrolled for the next unifying outrage that might — just might — finally do what years of courtroom drama and a very public hostage ordeal could not.

“What are we supposed to do with all this European funding now?” Cohen’s colleagues wondered.

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