Thousands of anti-government protesters gathered at Tel Aviv’s Habima Square on Saturday night as the movement returned to the center stage following the end of the weekly rallies for the Gaza hostages last week after almost two years.
The war in Gaza and the victims of the October 7, 2023, Hamas onslaught were nevertheless still at the top of the agenda, and speakers included bereaved families.
Represented among the protesters were members of disparate activist groups, whose various causes and demands were on display throughout the square.
Many of the core issues featured by protesters related to and were centered around the October 7 Hamas onslaught and the subsequent two-year war in Gaza, with speakers including the mother of a soldier killed in Hamas captivity.
Other, older issues, such as the government’s many attempts to weaken the judiciary, were mentioned as well.
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A large group of the protesters marched to Habima Square from the Begin-Kaplan interchange to kick off the evening’s proceedings.
Anti-government protesters demand the establishment of a state commission of inquiry into the October 7 massacre, at Habima Square in Tel Aviv, December 6, 2025. (Avshalom Sassoni/Flash90)
The Haaretz newspaper reported that they were approached by several right-wing activists as they marched, who were pushed back by the police after a brief confrontation broke out.
The right-wing activists later attempted to confront protesters in Habima Square, the newspaper reported, and were again removed by police after scuffling with them.
Brothers in Arms, a reservist protest group established in 2023 in response to the government’s attempts to overhaul the judiciary, set up a large stand on the square’s south end, where its members railed against the government’s bid to codify exemptions from military service for ultra-Orthodox men.
Nearby, activists from the left-wing group Looking the Occupation in the Eye held signs declaring: “We were silent about the occupation, now we have a dictatorship.” About 100 other left-wing protesters hoisted images of Palestinian children killed in Gaza.
On the other side of the Brothers in Arms stall, the Movement for Quality Governance set up a tent calling for a state commission of inquiry into Israel’s failures in the lead-up to the October 7 onslaught.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has offered various reasons as to why he will not establish such a commission, first insisting it could not be done in wartime and later claiming that the president of the High Court could not be trusted to appoint a fair-minded judge or retired judge to head the commission, and that the panel’s conclusions would be rejected by a sizeable proportion of the public.
A protester dressed as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu mocks his request for a pardon from President Isaac Herzog, at an anti-government protest in Habima Square, Tel Aviv, on December 6, 2025. (Avshalom Sassoni/Flash90)
A large banner strung up between two trees near the Movement for Quality Governance tent was emblazoned with an image of Netanyahu’s face and the accusation: “Crime Minister.”
The Crime Minister protest group sprang up a decade ago, when the corruption charges against Netanyahu that yielded the current, ongoing trial first came to light.
A video playing over a screen accused Netanyahu of arranging cash payments from Qatar to Hamas and salvaging their reputations when they were shunned by much of the Arab world. This, the video posited, led to the Hamas attack and explained why Netanyahu was loath to allow a proper inquiry.
The rally was emceed by leading anti-government activists Shikma Bressler, who rose to prominence during the 2023 judicial overhaul protests, which were suspended in the immediate aftermath of October 7.
“We are the people. We all can and must end the destruction of democracy and of the country,” she said, after the rally opened with Hatikva, Israel’s national anthem. “Together, we can all rebuild the State of Israel as a country we’ll all be proud of: Jewish, democratic, liberal, serene.”
The matters of Netanyahu’s criminal trial and the pardon he requested from President Isaac Herzog last week were also at the center of attention.
Maayan Sherman, whose soldier son Ron was killed by an Israeli airstrike while in Hamas captivity, told protesters that she blamed Netanyahu for his death.
“Ron was one of at least 42 hostages who reached Gaza alive and were killed there because of the decision of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who preferred dead hostages over a deal that would have brought everyone back alive but could have ended his rule,” Sherman said.
She said that “because of this loss,” she was demanding that Herzog reject Netanyahu’s request for a mid-trial pardon.
“Don’t you dare cancel Benjamin Netanyahu’s trial,” she warned. “Nobody in this country can be above the law… that’s a red line that Israel, as a democratic country, must not cross.”
She slammed Netanyahu’s “coalition of crooks and parasites” for seeking to pass a “corrupt draft-dodging bill [for the Haredim]… at the expense of worn-out reservists.”
A placard demanding that President Isaac Herzog reject Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s request for a pardon is seen at an anti-government protest in Habima Square, Tel Aviv, on December 6, 2025. (Tal A.M./Pro-Democracy Protest Movement)
“We demand a real, independent state commission of inquiry, not a politicized whitewashing committee designed to protect those responsible,” she added, railing against the government’s effort to establish its own probe of the Hamas invasion. “We won’t let the people who were responsible on the day of the massacre judge themselves.”
“My duty as a mother did not end when Ron’s heart stopped beating,” she said. “This country deserves a chance to rebuild… after this bad government took so much from us.”
After Sherman, Brothers in Arms activist Omri Ronen took the stage, hailing the overwhelmingly secular crowd as Israel’s “serving, productive public, the locomotive of the country.”
“You all served in the army,” he told the protesters. “This is a full wagon, full of talent and creativity and Jewish and humanist values,” he added, alluding to a famous comment by ultra-Orthodox master Rabbi Abraham Yeshayahu Karelitz (Hazon Ish) to Israel’s first prime, David Ben Gurion, that secular Israelis were like an “empty wagon.”
Ronen told the crowd that the “enormous energy that has emerged over the past three years” — since the protests against the judicial overhaul — will in the next election manifest in “a massive show of hope and synergy of people who’ve decided to build themselves and their country.”
“If we keep faithfully charting the same path together, nothing can stop us,” he said to the listening crowd. “You are the new pioneers.”
People attend a protest demanding the establishment of a state commission of inquiry into the October 7 massacre, at Habima Square in Tel Aviv, December 6, 2025.(Avshalom Sassoni/Flash90)
Additional smaller protests were held in other locations up and down Israel, including in Haifa, Jerusalem and Carmei Gat.
The rally in Carmei Gat, in southern Israel, was a weekly affair organized by members of Kibbutz Nir Oz, which suffered heavy losses in the October 7 massacre. Unlike the other protests, it focused primarily on the last remaining deceased hostage in Gaza, Ran Gvili, and the fight to return his body to Israel.
It was attended by the brother of Hadar Goldin, whose body was returned by Hamas last month, 11 years after he was killed fighting in Gaza, and by Nira Sharabi, the widow of Yossi Sharabi, who was slain in Hamas captivity and his body returned from Gaza in October.
“This is the final stretch of a long and unparalleled struggle,” Sharabi told the crowd, stressing that Israel must not move ahead with the next stages of the US-backed plan for Gaza before Gvili’s body is returned.
“This is an opportunity that will not come again. This is the moment to make sure that no hostage is left behind. That no family is left behind. That our values are not left behind,” she urged. “Only then will the sun be able to set on October 7.”
