Angry Israelis heckle ministers out of hospital as they visit wounded: ‘You’ve ruined this country’

Pressure is mounting on Israeli authorities to confirm the fate of those missing. Warning: This article contains details that some may find distressing

Two of Israel’s cabinet ministers were heckled during hospital visits to see the wounded as anger mounted in the country amid an escalation of the ongoing war between prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government and Hamas militants.

Israel’s environment minister Idit Silman was forced to return from a hospital after anguished residents accused the government of “ruining the country”.

Ms Silman had come to visit those who were receiving treatment at the Assaf Harofeh Hospital in Tzrifin in central Israel after the deadly attack by Hamas and was seen talking to a family member outside when the situation became heated, forcing her to return.

“You’ve ruined this country! Get out of here!” an unidentified person told her.

Another person in scrubs said: "It’s our turn to stand together – left and right – and help without you. You’ve destroyed our country. Leave!"

“How are you not ashamed to wage another war?” he added.

Economy minister Nir Barkat also faced angry crowds when he visited the Sheba Medical Center in Tel Aviv to meet the injured.

Mr Barkat was seen standing and listening as frustrated family members confronted him. “You understand where you brought us to?” a man asked. “Can you see what is happening to us?”

He was also heckled during the funeral of the son of former economy minister Izhar Shai. The brother of Yaron Shai said the government should be ashamed for opening the doors “with its debased actions” to Hamas, according to The Times of Israel.

The death toll in Israel has crossed 1,200, including 189 soldiers, and more than 1,100 people have been killed in Gaza in Israel’s retaliatory air strikes.

More than 2.3 million Palestinians who live in the densely packed Gaza City were plunged into darkness after the territory’s only power station ran out of fuel and shut down.

Palestinians remove a dead body from the rubble of a building after an Israeli airstrike Jebaliya refugee camp, Gaza Strip on Monday (AP)

The Israeli government on Monday even halted the entry of food, water, fuel, and medicine into the territory where nearly half of the population is children.

Pressure was mounting on Israeli authorities to confirm the fate of those missing following Hamas’s attack on an Israeli settlement after breaching the borders.

Iris Haggai Liniado, who lives in Singapore, told Israeli newspaper Haaretz that her parents have been missing since Saturday and it is believed that they were kidnapped by Hamas militants. But they have received no word or confirmation on their whereabouts from the authorities.

She expressed frustration with the Israeli government and said: "It feels very crazy to me that the Israelis who are hurt and broken right now are doing all the work”.

“We all gave to this country. We all served in the army, we all pay a crazy amount of taxes, and we live in our country where our paychecks don’t support the cost of living,” she said.

“The only thing we believed that our government was good for was keeping us safe and helping us when we were in distress. But even that wasn’t true.”

Mr Netanyahu on Wednesday vowed to “crush and destroy” Hamas and said every member of the organisation was a “dead man”.

He issued the dire warning in a televised address and said atrocities took place during the Hamas attacks. He claimed boys and girls were bound and shot in the head, people burned alive, women raped, and soldiers beheaded.

Mr Netanyahu joined with a top political rival on Wednesday to create a wartime cabinet to oversee Israel’s retaliation against Hamas, with hundreds of thousands of Israeli troops amassed at Gaza’s border in preparation for a potential ground attack on the besieged enclave.