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Yossi Sarid, leader of the left-wing Meretz Party and a Knesset member, addressed the crowd. He called for the resignation of the prime minister and "his collaborators," cabinet ministers Avigdor Kahalani and Yitzhak Mordechai.

"We won't be the donkeys carrying the harbingers of destruction any longer," Sarid said, referring to the controversial book "The Messiah's Donkey," which portrays secular society as the donkey carrying the religious rulers on its back and doing all their dirty work.

"You who are riding towards a halachic state, get off our back! We're not your donkeys. We're not your suckers. He who is riding to Tel Rumeida and Joseph's Tomb, the Jewish settlement in Hebron and Yitzhar and all those damned places, we won't carry you on our backs anymore," Sarid called.

"We despise that man [Netanyahu], who regards everyone as traitors," Sarid said, telling the demonstrators: "You, too, are traitors in his eyes."

Knesset member Shlomo Ben-Ami blasted Netanyahu for his indifference to social causes and to "the victims of the criminal social neglect of the Likud and Shas…You, Netanyahu, don't have and never had a social memory and a social heart. You have no remedy for the diseases of education, the collapse of welfare and you're indifferent to the collapse of the health system."

Most of the demonstrators were teens and adults in their 20s and 30s. Many brought their children. Hundreds of police officers guarded the square and closed several surrounding streets.

Likud spokeswoman Ronit Eckstein said the demonstration was the first pre-planned spectacle of personal incitement against the prime minister. Peace Now should have held the rally in Gaza to demand Yasser Arafat fight terrorism, she said.