’No longer outcasts’: Anti-occupation activists find their place in Israeli protests
Left-wingers tried to insert their messages into mainstream Israeli protests for years, only to be rejected. Today’s anti-Netanyahu protests are very different.
Oren Ziv | July 30, 2020 - +972 Magazine
▻https://www.972mag.com/anti-occupation-netanyahu-protests
The growing presence of Israeli anti-occupation protesters has been one of the most notable aspects of the wave of demonstrations that started on July 14 outside the Prime Minister’s Residence on Balfour Street, Jerusalem. Among other things, this bloc of protesters have demanded justice for Iyad al-Hallaq, a Palestinian with autism whom Israeli police shot dead in the Old City of Jerusalem in late May.
The anti-occupation bloc, comprising several hundred protesters, are not on the margins of the demonstrations. Last Saturday night, for example, it was possible to hear them chanting “Justice for Iyad” at the Prime Minister’s residence, even as Israeli riot police were forcefully dispersing the crowd.
In contrast to countless instances over the past decade, in which left-wing protesters have tried to insert radical messaging into mainstream demonstrations and been met with rejection or violence, this time, the response was very different. (...)