Josh Breiner, Nir Hasson, Bar Peleg - Ha'aretz
The Israel Police “won’t allow any violence against protesters, civilians or officers,” acting commissioner Motti Cohen said on Thursday, ahead of planned anti-government demonstrations in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv. Similar rallies have been met with increasingly harsh police response, as well as attacks on protesters by far-right activists.
“We will continue to allow demonstrations across the country, regardless of their messages or the identity of protesters,” Cohen said, vowing to stamp out “rioting.”
According to him, “The police are not a political body…We will ensure every citizen’s freedom of speech and freedom of protest, within the bounds of the law. The majority is protesting lawfully, and we, as police officers, must ensure they can exercise their rights.”
The police are expected to bolster their presence as groups from the far-right, primarily the La Familia fan club of the Beitar Jerusalem soccer team, have called on members to come out and show anti-government protesters that "the rules of the game have changed."
La Familia - the group's name chosen deliberately due to its association with the Mafia - , has already taken part in two counter-demonstrations in Jerusalem and its members were accused of assaulting protesters. Now the group instructed its members in a Facebook post to gather at Jerusalem's First Station complex on Thursday night, not far from the protest hub near the official residence of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
The statement continued, "Pay attention leftist wimps: The rules of the game have changed from here on in."
Accounts obtained by Haaretz show that La Familia members were invited by Netanyahu's Likud to protests the party had organized. In a video obtained by Haaretz, one of the pro-Netanyahu protesters can be heard calling them "A group of heroes" and saying that the "left is done for." He can also be heard calling on viewers to "share how La Familia came here and this will be the end of them.”
During the protest, a young member of La Familia was called to the microphone, and called left-wing demonstrators “the worst of the trash," and added "they aren’t Jews, they aren’t Jews, this is a religious war, simply a religious war and you’re a bunch of sons of bitches.”
The Israel Police are preparing to bolster their presence at the protest Thursday night in light of La Familia's call. Due to the concern that the group will try to attack demonstrators and the violent assault of protesters at a demonstration in Tel Aviv on Tuesday night, police will likely send more officers to the First Station complex and the Prime Minister's Residence, including undercover and special forces in both locations.
They have also founded the "Protest Watch" group, which has a number of goals: guarding the protesters on their way home, finding the provocateurs and preventing vandalism. “If a single stone is thrown, the protest has been destroyed, and a single poster of Netanyahu in an SS uniform also destroys it,” Dvir Kariv, a Protest Watch member, said. Kariv worked for 33 years in the Shin Bet, nearly 20 of them as part of the unit that investigates Jewish extremists. Kariv was also the first to question Yigal Amir after he assassinated Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin.
"If we spot a provocation and a provocateur who won’t stop their actions despite our requests we surround them with Israeli flags and call the police," Kariv said. He relates that one woman at a Jerusalem protest had a bottle thrown at her head. The incident was never reported because she wasn't hurt, he said, but "it creates a phenomenon where people are afraid." The group's goal, then, is to diffuse this fear by giving protesters an escort and calling the police if tension rises.
In another project, started by political activist and television presenter Emilie Moatti, left-wing activists raised money to hire a security firm to protect protesters. Some of the money will be used to buy body cameras for volunteers. “I woke up this morning to many messages about friends who took punches at the protest in Tel Aviv," Moatti said. "In the beginning I tweeted that maybe we should organize some security for these people. Afterwards, I thought we needed to do it instead of writing about it.” Within three hours of sharing the donation link, she raised 30,000 shekels.
The organizers are advising protesters to attend in large groups and to keep emergency telephone numbers handy. “Contrary to the person accused of criminal wrongdoing (Netanyahu) we care about each other,” Roee Peleg, one of the organizers, said. “I hear about people deterred from attending, but they're not afraid. People want to exercise their democratic right, but they didn't come to get stabbed or pepper sprayed. Every blow suffered by a protester is the fault of the Israel Police and the criminal defendant as well.”
Police sources have criticized how the Israel Police handled the anti-police brutality protest in Tel Aviv Tuesday night, which took place outside of Public Security Minister Amir Ohana's house. The sources criticized the inadequate planning for the event, and how protesters were able to disturb public order. Tel Aviv police have, on the other hand, expressed satisfaction that they did not prevent the protesters from demonstrating.
The Israel Police are investigating an incident in which protesters were attacked by fans of the Maccabi Tel Aviv soccer team while police were in the immediate vicinity. A police source said that they cannot be present at all times at a protest spread out across the city, and that police immediately responded when they got the call.
Dvir Kariv said that it's only a matter of time until there is another political murder, and not necessarily that of a politician. "We are weeks away from the political murder of a protester. Based on conversations I’ve head on a purely professional basis, beyond my views, the situation is very ripe for murder," he said.
"The responses from politicians today only reinforce and speed up the process. Police intelligence has a very difficult time thwarting someone who comes to a protest with a grenade," Kariv said, adding: "It’s not Yigal Amir, who wasn’t a lone attacker, and we didn’t succeed there either.”
Mounted police confront anti-government protesters in Tel Aviv, July 29, 2020.Credit: Tomer Appelbaum
An anti-Netanyahu protest in Jerusalem's Paris Square, near the Prime Minister's Residence, July 25, 2020.Credit: Emil Salman
A pro-Netanyahu counter-protest outside the Prime Minister's Residence in Jerusalem, July 23, 2020.Credit: Ohad Zwigenberg
Open gallery view
An injured protester who was attacked at the demonstration outside Amir Ohana's house, Tel Aviv, July 28, 2020.Credit: Ben Nezer / Galatz
Analysis: Netanyahu Has Launched the Decisive Part of His Plan: To Set the Country on Fire
The prime minister offers limp condemnation for injured protesters over social media and seems to be fueling extremist right-wing violence
In recent years, Benjamin Netanyahu has been the main instigator of violence in Israel, and by virtue of his position and standing, also the most dangerous one. His apprenticeship came in the fall of 1995, during the period of the Oslo Accords. In recent days, as his political, legal and family distress has increased, he has been implementing the decisive phase of his plan: setting the country on fire.
Fueled by winks and nods, on Tuesday night squads of extremist right-wing thugs armed with clubs and bottles took to the streets of Tel Aviv and attacked peaceable, law-abiding demonstrators. Netanyahu – the fastest draw on Twitter when it comes to himself or his son – waited, deliberately, for 14 hours before posting a self-righteous, hypocritical message that dealt mostly with himself and threats directed against him and his family.
Israel's Locked-down, Let-down Youth Rattles Netanyahu's Cage. LISTEN
He called upon the police to investigate and “get to the truth,” meaning who attacked whom – Shay Sekler, the gentle-looking young man who didn’t exactly resemble Rambo, or those black-shirted hooligans incited by the Prime Minister’s Residence who slashed his head with the glass shard of a bottle. There was also a limp condemnation in the post. When the first demonstrator is murdered, Netanyahu will roll his eyes. I issued a condemnation, he will say, and retrieve some sentence from his Twitter feed that was hiding in his post.
We’ve almost forgotten how all this started. When he was indicted, I wrote that to keep his trial from going forward, including the testimony of state witnesses that is expected to spell his political end, he wouldn’t hesitate “to burn down the clubhouse.” Literally.
Netanyahu is not the first prime minister who has been threatened. Ehud Olmert sustained serious threats over his negotiations with the Palestinians, as did Ehud Barak, as did Ariel Sharon over the disengagement from Gaza, including religious rulings against him.
And, of course, Yitzhak Rabin. The threats to him were of the most serious kinds – declaring that religious law permitted him to be killed, the scene at Zion Square in Jerusalem, coffins. And lax personal protection that doesn’t come anywhere close to Netanyahu’s countless layers of security. Yet none of the other prime ministers whined or complained from morning to night.
Netanyahu Will Have Protesters' Blood on His Hands
Broken Bottles, Fists and Pepper Spray: Protesters Against Netanyahu Gov't Recount Assault
Protesters Attacked at Demonstration Against Police Brutality Outside Minister's Tel Aviv Home
People will be stabbed and sustain blows on the streets from Netanyahu’s admirers, their heads nearly showered by water cannons pointed directly at them by a hateful policeman, and the robbed Cossack in the fortress on Balfour Street will lament his bad luck.
On the eve of Tisha B’Av, Netanyahu isn’t dreaming about creating a reconciliation cabinet, which is provided for in the agreement he signed with Benny Gantz at the end of April. His attention is directed to the next elections. And he would prefer a bloody campaign over any kind of reconciliation. He would prefer another round of elections in November, maybe at the height of a third wave of the coronavirus, and for emergency rooms to be collapsing from COVID-19 patients, along wit
The prime minister offers limp condemnation for injured protesters over social media and seems to be fueling extremist right-wing violence
In recent years, Benjamin Netanyahu has been the main instigator of violence in Israel, and by virtue of his position and standing, also the most dangerous one. His apprenticeship came in the fall of 1995, during the period of the Oslo Accords. In recent days, as his political, legal and family distress has increased, he has been implementing the decisive phase of his plan: setting the country on fire.
Fueled by winks and nods, on Tuesday night squads of extremist right-wing thugs armed with clubs and bottles took to the streets of Tel Aviv and attacked peaceable, law-abiding demonstrators. Netanyahu – the fastest draw on Twitter when it comes to himself or his son – waited, deliberately, for 14 hours before posting a self-righteous, hypocritical message that dealt mostly with himself and threats directed against him and his family.
Israel's Locked-down, Let-down Youth Rattles Netanyahu's Cage. LISTEN
He called upon the police to investigate and “get to the truth,” meaning who attacked whom – Shay Sekler, the gentle-looking young man who didn’t exactly resemble Rambo, or those black-shirted hooligans incited by the Prime Minister’s Residence who slashed his head with the glass shard of a bottle. There was also a limp condemnation in the post. When the first demonstrator is murdered, Netanyahu will roll his eyes. I issued a condemnation, he will say, and retrieve some sentence from his Twitter feed that was hiding in his post.
We’ve almost forgotten how all this started. When he was indicted, I wrote that to keep his trial from going forward, including the testimony of state witnesses that is expected to spell his political end, he wouldn’t hesitate “to burn down the clubhouse.” Literally.
Netanyahu is not the first prime minister who has been threatened. Ehud Olmert sustained serious threats over his negotiations with the Palestinians, as did Ehud Barak, as did Ariel Sharon over the disengagement from Gaza, including religious rulings against him.
And, of course, Yitzhak Rabin. The threats to him were of the most serious kinds – declaring that religious law permitted him to be killed, the scene at Zion Square in Jerusalem, coffins. And lax personal protection that doesn’t come anywhere close to Netanyahu’s countless layers of security. Yet none of the other prime ministers whined or complained from morning to night.
Netanyahu Will Have Protesters' Blood on His Hands
Broken Bottles, Fists and Pepper Spray: Protesters Against Netanyahu Gov't Recount Assault
Protesters Attacked at Demonstration Against Police Brutality Outside Minister's Tel Aviv Home
People will be stabbed and sustain blows on the streets from Netanyahu’s admirers, their heads nearly showered by water cannons pointed directly at them by a hateful policeman, and the robbed Cossack in the fortress on Balfour Street will lament his bad luck.
On the eve of Tisha B’Av, Netanyahu isn’t dreaming about creating a reconciliation cabinet, which is provided for in the agreement he signed with Benny Gantz at the end of April. His attention is directed to the next elections. And he would prefer a bloody campaign over any kind of reconciliation. He would prefer another round of elections in November, maybe at the height of a third wave of the coronavirus, and for emergency rooms to be collapsing from COVID-19 patients, along wit
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