It happened almost by chance. One evening, a few months ago, traffic on the major Tel Aviv artery Begin Road came to a halt. Under a bridge in central Tel Aviv dozens of protesters blocked the road with signs and megaphones. Every evening, they count the days the hostages have been in captivity, call out all their names—both the living and the dead—and invite drivers and passersby to join the protest. Some drivers step out of their cars and join in, some wait patiently, and others get angry and dare to honk.
That evening, one taxi driver gestured with his hands to one of the protest leaders: “Come here.” She didn’t understand—maybe she suspected he was just another person looking for a fight. But he kept signaling, “Come, come here.” She approached, and he pointed upward. She was still confused. Then he rolled down the window and said, “Come on, get on my roof.”
And the rest is a kind of local history.
Every evening, they are there. The driver stops, and the protestor stands on the roof, calling out the names of the hostages. By now, they know each other—they’ve become friends.
The driver’s name is Rafael Shakhuri, a 68-year-old from Tel Aviv, a taxi driver for 46 years, married with two children.
“She said into the megaphone, ‘Thank you to Rafael the angel,’ and everyone applauded. I asked her not to do that again if she wanted to keep standing on the roof because it embarrassed me,” he said with a smile, speaking to this reporter from his taxi next to the daily protest.
The daily protests on Begin Road, led by Einav Tsangaoker and Yifat Calderon, take a more confrontational approach than those held at Hostages Square on Saturday nights. Here, they don’t invite musicians to appeal to a broader audience – rather, the protesters openly call out against the government.
Shakhuri connects with this approach,
“They turned an optimistic person like me into a skeptic,” he said angrily about Israel’s leadership, “Unfortunately, we don’t have a leader today. We don’t have a single leader like Ben-Gurion, Rabin, Begin, or even Sharon. We have no leaders today. What we have are politicians of the lowest kind, the most pathetic kind—I don’t even have the words to describe their disgrace.”
What matters most to him, he emphasized again and again, is bringing all the hostages home now.
“I’m afraid for them—there are still people alive there,” he said. “And I don’t trust Netanyahu. He only cares about preserving his power. I’m also worried about our soldiers who are still fighting there. I’m not against fighting, but first, we need to get all the hostages out; otherwise, their lives are in danger. These aren’t soldiers captured on the battlefield. In past wars, we had soldiers who were taken prisoner, and then we made prisoner exchanges—we brought back soldiers for soldiers. But that’s not the case here. These are women, children, and elderly people who were kidnapped from their beds. Look at the Bibas family – what more do you need? That is the most painful reminder of what happened to us on October 7.”
“The worst thing,” he continued angrily, “is seeing the Knesset members behave in committees as if it belongs to them and not to the public—kicking out parents of hostages, grandchildren, cjhildren. Who do they think they are? The Knesset is the people’s house; it should be for us. So how dare they treat someone like that—a person who has gone through the most painful thing imaginable, whose family member was kidnapped, who doesn’t even know their condition? It infuriates me beyond words. And then there’s the judicial overhaul—their attempt to weaken the Supreme Court. It’s all connected.”
When asked if Shakhuri tells his passengers that he supports the protests on Begin Road, he replied “Of course.”
“They tell me their side, and I tell them mine, in the clearest and most decisive way,” he said. “Every person hears the other side, and I try to convince them they’re wrong. I can see that people are depressed, that they’re not in the mood, they have no security, a lot of anger, a lot of complaints, and no one to turn to. The majority of people I talk to share my opinion, eye to eye, about the government. Since October 7, we won’t have any security as long as these politicians are running the country.”
Shakhuri was never involved in politics, not even when he worked as a driver for Yosef Paritzky, the late minister of infrastructure, or when he drove Chaim Yosef Zadok, who was a minister in Rabin’s first government. But he remembers when his dispute with Benjamin Netanyahu began.
In the 1996 election campaign, Netanyahu promised taxi drivers that if he were elected, he would toughen the conditions for receiving “green numbers” (government-issued taxi licenses), and only drivers with ten years of experience or more would be eligible.
“And what did he do just a minute after that? He let everyone who paid 250,000 shekels [about $69,000] buy public rights! He flooded our industry; instead of 10,000 taxi drivers, there were 15,000, and our livelihoods were cut in half. He wanted to add another billion shekels to the state coffers so the government could celebrate. So, what—he’s not a liar? He’s not deceitful?” said Shakhuri.
He also hasn’t forgotten that in 1995, Netanyahu also stood on the balcony in Zion Square in Jerusalem during that infamous protest, where signs depicting then-Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin in SS uniforms were waved, and the agitated crowd chanted calls for murder.
“Ben-Gvir was also there at the protest, and today he’s a partner of Netanyahu. Yigal Amir is just the gun, but the ones who pulled the trigger were the inciters, with Netanyahu at the head of them,” he said.
Shakhuri grew up in Neve Tzedek in the 1950s and takes pride in never leaving Tel Aviv. He has wonderful childhood memories.
"It was a paradise to grow up there—Yemenites, Iraqis. You’d go out to play in the middle of the street, and not a single car would pass by,” he said. “It was a low-income neighborhood. There were no football fields, so we used stones or backpacks to mark the goals. It was an amazing neighborhood. Back then, it was a poor neighborhood, but its location was great, and today it’s the most expensive neighborhood in Tel Aviv, if not in the country. But back then, we’d walk 150 meters, and we were already in the water. There was no Charles Clore Park, no roads, no concrete, no Dan Panorama hotel. It was all sand, and the Hassan Bek mosque was there. We were mischievous, we’d go up to the mosque, and there were no railings. It was dangerous. But that’s how kids are. Later, I heard that snipers shot from that mosque to Neve Tzedek during the War of Independence."
He shared these pleasant childhood memories to explain just how angry the recent changes in the city make him:
“I’ve already gotten dozens of tickets for waiting for passengers at the entrances to the train stations. But what can I do? In both the Haganah and HaShalom train stations, there’s not even room for a single taxi to drop off or pick up passengers,” he said. They recently renovated the HaShalom Station, made it nice, but I want to drop off passengers—some of them are elderly,or tourists with suitcases. Did you not think about providing access for taxis? I want to take this to an administrative petition against the municipality, and I’m sure I’ll win, because I shouldn’t have to pay these fines.”
When asked if he believes if things will get better, Shakhuri responded, “Yes, I hope there will be elections, that there will be different leadership. I’m also putting some hope in Trump, who is a true friend. Although today he’s helping the wrong side, he’s helping Bibi because he has no choice. I want to believe that the situation can improve because I’m optimistic—by nature, I’m optimistic—and I hope we’ll maybe see light at the end of the tunnel. Since October 7, people have been confused and insecure, and the most important thing is to bring the hostages home. That’s the most noble and true thing that’s needed in our crazy country.”
This article was translated from Hebrew by Nancye Kochen.
