Hostage deaths ‘should not have happened,’ wife of hostage Keith Siegel says
Aviva Siegel, 63, who was rescued in a prisoner swap last year, told NBC News last night that news of the hostages’ deaths made her “just so sad. I was broken up into pieces. I could not stop crying and shaking. ... It just seems the cruelest thing that could happen.”
Her husband, Keith Siegel, 65, an American like Goldberg-Polin, remains in captivity. She spoke about how she had been looking forward to meeting Goldberg-Polin after having spent so much time with his family.
“It should not have happened,” Siegel said of the hostage deaths.
She said she is keeping hope that her husband is strong and will make it out alive, because “if I don’t, I won’t be able to survive.”
His daughter, Elan Tiv, 33, said she wishes her father could see all of the people coming out to demand the hostages be brought home.
“I want to ask the Biden administration to see that Netanyahu is not doing his job. Netanyahu is killing my dad. Netanyahu is killing the hostages,” she said. She asked Biden to “use his good power to be a leader.”
She called on Netanyahu to “let someone else do the most important mission and bring the hostages home and get this war to a finish.”
'Only a strike will shake things up,' trade union chair says
The chair of Histadrut, Israel's biggest trade union, has said today's strike was needed to "shake things up" and push Israeli leadership to reach a cease-fire deal with Hamas.
“I refuse to remain indifferent to the fact that our beloved country is becoming a country that abandons its people,” Arnon Bar-David said in a speech to thousands of Israelis who gathered at a rally yesterday in Tel Aviv. “A deal must be reached; this is the most important thing."
In an earlier meeting, Bar-David said he believed Israel was "in a downward spiral" and that "only a strike will shake things up," according to a news release shared online by Histadrut.
During his speech, he also warned of the impact Israel's continued war in Gaza was having on the country's economy as he expressed fears of a future "mass economic collapse" that "future generations" may have to pay for.
Israelis launch nationwide strike in push for cease-fire deal
Israelis have launched the country's first nationwide general strike since Oct. 7, amid widespread fury over the government's failure to agree to a Gaza cease-fire deal after the bodies of six hostages were found in the enclave over the weekend.
Histadrut, Israel's biggest trade union, ordered the nationwide strike from 6 a.m. local time, with the action expected to last at least one day and shut down much of the country's economy.
The strike is expected to shut government offices, schools and private businesses, while flights were also briefly halted from Israel's international airport.
The strike is expected to bring much of Israel's economy to a grinding halt as Netanyahu faces mounting pressure to strike a deal with Hamas that would secure the release of hostages who remain held in Gaza and bring Israel's deadly offensive in the enclave to an end.
Photos show mass protests in Israel last night
Hundreds of thousands of people took to the streets of Tel Aviv last night, an eruption of anger over the killings of the hostages and the Israeli government's failure to agree to a cease-fire deal with Hamas that could secure the release of the remaining captives in Gaza.
IDF recovers bodies of 6 hostages killed by Hamas, including American Hersh Goldberg-Polin, in Gaza
A global outpouring of grief and anger erupted after the bodies of six hostages were recovered by the Israel Defense Forces in a tunnel under the city of Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip.
Among them was 23-year-old American-Israeli Hersh Goldberg-Polin, whose parents advocated for his return at last month’s Democratic National Convention. NBC News reports on the protests and growing questions over cease-fire negotiations.