Tuesday’s demonstration was a turning point in the evolution of protests against Netanyahu. The protests had been sustained up until now by older demonstrators, most of whom are relatively well off – retirees from the center of the country who are furious over what they see as the prime minister’s betrayal of their values, and have a hard time reconciling with the fact that someone under indictment is prime minister.
On Tuesday, however, the protest baton was passed on to the younger generation, whose anger is of an entirely different kind.
In the past few days, thousands of Israelis of all ages and from all walks of life protested outside Netanyahu’s residence in central Jerusalem – calling for his immediate resignation. The protests are the largest in a decade.
Netanyahu has been using the devastating Coronavirus crisis to delay his corruption trial, and pass anti-democratic legislation. But Israelis are saying no to Netanyahu’s Covid dictatorship.
Tens of thousands are in the streets – and our incredible members are joining to support the fight. Hundreds of progressive Israelis have put up posters throughout Jerusalem and to print out masks and signs with a call to stop the democratic collapse.
Source: Haaretz
Jerusalem Has Seen Many Protests, but This One Was a Turning Point for the anti-Netanyahu Movement
‘We’re young and no longer willing to shut up and be nice,’ says one of the thousands of demonstrators who turned up near the Prime Minister’s Residence angry and bold
At around midnight on Tuesday, I went up to the roof of a commercial building overlooking Jerusalem’s Paris Square, near the residence of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. My cellphone had stopped working after it was sprayed by police water cannons, which meant that I was free to observe the protest instead of taking pictures or updating the Haaretz newsroom.
Paris Square is currently being refurbished, and two Palestinian laborers were still paving the sidewalk when the protest began. The demonstrators gave them protest stickers and tried to get them to participate in the protest, but they were busy removing their equipment.
By midnight, the square looked like a war zone. A recycling bin was on fire in the middle of the street. All the adjacent streets were blocked off by overturned trash cans. The demonstrators used the paving stones that had not yet been laid to block the road near Kings Hotel. The sand underneath the paving stones was exposed, and for a moment it recalled the slogan from the 1968 student rebellion in France – sous les pavés, la plage – Under paving stones, the beach.
The police water cannon was shifting back and forth, clearing the hundreds of demonstrators from the streets with its powerful spray. Most of them took shelter behind cars or in courtyards, while others stood defiantly to bear the brunt of the water. Several people were injured and some threw water bottles back at the cannons, but I did not see any stones thrown.
Three mounted policemen repeatedly charged at groups in the crowd and in the center of it all, members of the Yasam Special Patrol Unit began carrying out mass arrests. Ironically, the detainees were loaded onto a bus with signage showing that it belonged to a regional council of West Bank settlements.
On the roof, one demonstrator tried to set fire to an Israeli flag – the same person who two hours earlier had tried to grab a microphone from Channel 13 News reporter Avishay Ben Haim. The flag just wouldn’t ignite and the man left and then came back with two cigarette lighters, but was spotted by another protester. “You’re causing harm,” the other demonstrator yelled, “It’s your country too.”
“My country is finished, scorched,” he responded. Other protesters gathered around and tried to convince him to stop.
“I’m fighting over my country because I care about it. If it was finished, I wouldn’t be here,” one woman implored.
Longtime reporters in Jerusalem don’t recall another demonstration likes this, at least not in West Jerusalem. In 2011, during the wave of social protests in Israel, there was a larger protest near the Prime Minister’s Residence, but it dispersed quietly. In 2015, there was a turbulent demonstration by young Ethiopians, but they were smaller in number and it was also less violent.
Tuesday’s demonstration was a turning point in the evolution of protests against Netanyahu. The protests had been sustained up until now by older demonstrators, most of whom are relatively well off – retirees from the center of the country who are furious over what they see as the prime minister’s betrayal of their values, and have a hard time reconciling with the fact that someone under indictment is prime minister.
On Tuesday, however, the protest baton was passed on to the younger generation, whose anger is of an entirely different kind. Jerusalem District police commander Doron Yedid called them “leftists” and “anarchists,” but it’s more complicated than that.
On the fringes of the protests there were in fact been a few young people who might barely be considered anarchists. But in the course of the entire evening on Tuesday, I saw just one individual who was masked (other than for pandemic reasons), and he appeared to be a friend of the man who tried to burn the flag.
Most of the protesters had other things on their minds. It wasn’t just rage over corruption and frustration over the political situation. It was also, and perhaps even mostly, economic frustration. The coronavirus pandemic has dealt a critical blow to the finances of university students and other young people. Many of them have been forced to return to live with their parents, to change their lifestyles and to forgo many of their dreams.
“There’s a feeling that redlines and the limits of shame have been crossed,” said Arnon of Gedera, “when everything is collapsing all around, and a man who is worth 50 million shekels, whose level of miserliness should be illegal, asked for a tax exemption and Miki Zohar says he can’t make it through the month.”
He was referring to coalition whip Zohar, who recently justified a one million shekels tax exemption for the prime minster by saying that he shouldn’t have to worry about making it through the month financially.
“As you can see, we are young and no longer willing to shut up and be nice,” said Sahar Vardi of Jerusalem, who was arrested during the course of the protest. The police violence, she claimed, is making protesters understand “the extent to which the current regime is doing whatever it wants.”
At around 1:30 A.M., the police finally managed to clear the square. The young people broke up into smaller groups. Several of them tried to get around the barricades at the Prime Minister’s Residence but it seemed that they weren’t from Jerusalem and didn’t know the neighborhood. A few others got into shouting matches with Rehavia residents who had poked out of their windows to complain about the noise.
The last group of protesters gathered opposite the Great Synagogue on King George Street. Mounted police stormed into the group and dispersed them as well. One of the demonstrators shouted before leaving: “We’re meeting again in front of the Prime Minister’s Residence on Thursday. Come.”
Source: 972 magazine
‘People are waking up’: 50 arrested in anti-Netanyahu protests
A protest against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu turned into a chaotic and historic night, during which Israeli-Jewish leftists turned their anger on the police.
The organizers of Tuesday night’s “Siege on Balfour” protest, outside the Prime Minister’s Residence in Jerusalem, never expected the latest demonstration against Benjamin Netanyahu’s corruption to turn into full-blown clashes with the police that would last into the early hours of the morning. It is hard to imagine that anyone thought 50 people would be arrested.
After all, protests by Israel’s Jewish left over the past few decades have typically been relatively calm — no burning trash cans or water cannons dousing demonstrators. But on “Bastille Day in Balfour,” all that changed.
Every person I spoke to during the protest agreed on one thing: what began in Tel Aviv following Saturday night’s protest against government inaction in the face of the economic crisis — in which hundreds blocked roads and 20 people were arrested — continued on Tuesday night. A number of young protesters said that this was only the beginning. “People are understanding that there is no choice but to go out and protest, even aggressively, and they do not need to apologize for their [political] positions,” said another demonstrator.
The beginning of Tuesday night’s rally looked indistinguishable from any other protest. Fairly quickly, however, it became apparent that while the organizers of the protest have been reticent regarding tying the recent anti-Netanyahu protests to other struggles in Israel-Palestine, the demonstrators were far more open to more radical messaging, including about resisting the occupation and police brutality.
The demonstration began gathering steam at 9 p.m. Hundreds of the protesters attempted and almost managed to break through the police barriers and march toward the Prime Minister’s Residence. The fewer than 20 police officers on the scene looked almost surprised by the protest, not to mention the eggs and bottles that were being thrown at them.
An hour later, the crowd changed direction and marched toward Jerusalem’s downtown. In addition to the nebulous and oft-heard chants demanding “democracy,” Tuesday night’s demonstrators also chanted the name of Iyad al-Hallaq, a Palestinian with mental disabilities who was chased and shot dead by Border Police officers in late May. The protesters, many of whom were younger than the average age at anti-Bibi rallies, turned out to be far more radical than the organizers. As opposed to previous anti-Netanyahu protests, the organizers did not try to stop the demonstration from taking a more aggressive approach. As the demonstrators marched in the city center and blocked the Jerusalem light rail, mainstream media outlets were quick to label them “anarchists” who came to incite and “riot.”
I didn’t see any more than a few activists who could be labeled “anarchists.” Most of those who took to the streets were radical activists, “ultras” belonging to the Hapoel Katamon Jerusalem soccer club, regulars at the anti-corruption protests that have taken place over the past few years across the country, and young people who have grown tired of Netanyahu’s rule. For many, it was their first time taking part in such a turbulent protest.
At around 11 p.m., as the demonstrators arrived at Zion Square in central Jerusalem, the police rushed in with officers on horseback and a water cannon that sprayed a blue liquid. Protesters said that had the police allowed them to march back to Balfour Street, the event would have ended quietly.
But in a move not typical of the Jewish left, the protesters began to confront the police. A small number threw bottles, chairs, and boxes at the mounted officers. An undercover officer who was in the middle of detaining a protester was attacked and fled to a nearby ambulance where he was treated for his wounds.
The demonstrators eventually made their way back to Paris Square, near the Prime Minister’s Residence, where they blocked the road with trash cans, cement blocks, and fences. One of the trash cans was set on fire. It took the police, who had already called in reinforcements, over an hour to clear the protesters — who continued to sit on the ground facing the horses and water tank — and open the street to traffic.
Among the 50 people arrested were veteran activists as well as first-timers. The arrestees were put on a bus owned by a company that provides transportation services to the residents of the Gush Etzion settlement bloc in the occupied West Bank. The police released 45 of them in the early hours of the morning, and asked to bring the remaining five before a judge.
Toward the end of the clashes at around 1 a.m., I spoke with a group of older protesters who tried to convince the officers to allow them to return to the protest tent they had established outside Netanyahu’s official residence, and which had been cleared by police earlier this week.
“We came because we saw there was chaos,” said Kuki Yona Hanisher, one of the veteran activists. “The way the police treated us was horrible. My daughter and I have attended all the protests. We are trying to save the country and now we have to deal with soldiers and officers.”
Yona Hanisher said it felt “wonderful” that many of the protesters on Tuesday night did not shy away from politicizing the rally. “We have a corrupt prime minister and we don’t want him. They tried to silence us on Saturday [during the economic protest] because we chanted ‘Bibi, go home.’”
“This is a turning point,” said Avi Asias, one of the veteran protestors who has attended nearly every anti-corruption rally in the last years. “There hasn’t been as successful a protest in maybe 30 years, we were able to wake up the young people in the thousands.” Asias said that this process began a few years ago with small protests in front of Attorney General Avichai Mandelblit’s home [to pressure him to take legal action against Netanyahu over corruption allegations] with hardly any young people. “Over the past month we’ve seen a change. People are waking up. Don’t forget that there are a million unemployed. Young people are out of work.”
“This protest also included right wingers,” Asias continued. “The corrupt thief [Netanyahu] heard, saw, and smelled the rage. Unfortunately, the police, with orders from above, most likely from Balfour, treated our young protesters violently. They jumped on them and hit them with horses and water. This is the fascistic behavior of a dictator.”
After the protest dispersed, I met Uri Nahman, a Likud party member since 1991 who has regularly taken part in the anti-Netanyahu protests. She sobbed as she sat on the ground next to the police officers who blocked protesters from the Prime Minister’s Residence and told me: “We are citizens who want to yell, this is supposed to be a democratic country, but it is becoming a dictatorship from day to day. How long will people be blind? This is no longer a war between right and left. How did we get to a situation in which the riot police are going against citizens?”
Martin Plaut 