Itzik Bonzel, a Hagvura Forum leader whose son Amit fell in Gaza, tore down a Democratic Party poster calling to end the war after it listed the names of fallen soldiers—including his son—saying families will not allow their children to be used for politics.
A tense scene unfolded Tuesday afternoon on Azza Street in Jerusalem, where Itzik Bonzel—one of the leaders of the Hagvura Forum and the father of fallen soldier Amit Bonzel—removed a Democratic Party poster that urged an end to the war and displayed the names of all fallen soldiers, including his son’s.
“It’s time to stop making vile use of our names,” Bonzel told Israel National News – Arutz Sheva on site. “A party like Yair Golan’s repeatedly makes disgusting political use of our children’s names, and we will not allow it. Wherever they hang up our children’s names—we will come and take those signs down.”
Bonzel said the families of the fallen are united in rejecting the politicization of their loss. “Enough with using the names of the martyrs who gave their lives for this land and this country,” he said. “We do not agree for our children’s names to be exploited politically. I came here, to Azza Street, to put an end to this.”
The confrontation crystallizes a raw and growing fault line in Israeli public life: bereaved families demanding that their loved ones’ memory not be instrumentalized—by any political faction—amid the most consequential national debates of the war.
