How a Jewish volunteer confronted settler hate march in Jerusalem

On the morning of June 5, a group of 30 bravehearts gathered in the old quarter of Jerusalem to do something unusual – never before had the hateful Zionist Flag March, taken out through the city every year, been confronted with the message of love and unity as this small gathering did.

A Jewish community organiser Shir Yerushalmi, who was part of the group countering the hate march, tells TRT World that the Israeli police sided with the violent Jewish settler mob and attacked them, snatching their ID cards and detaining some of them.

While settlers were allowed to go on a rampage “through the streets without interruption” and deface walls with racist graffiti, the police acted as mere spectators, using brute force on the peaceful volunteers instead.

Shir says the mobs assaulted them as well and threatened them using abusive language and “wishing us to be raped by Hamas”.

Every year on June 5, thousands of Israelis celebrate "Jerusalem Day" to commemorate the end of the 1967 Arab-Israeli war and the start of a broader occupation of Palestinian lands, particularly Jerusalem, which Israel refers to as the "reunification" of the city.

While marching through the Muslim quarter of the old city, settler mobs are accompanied by orchestras in what is known as the "Flag March" or "Dance of Flags." Every year, they chant the same hateful slogans, such as "Death to Arabs," "May your village burn," and "Muhammad is dead."

While the bloody onslaught on Gaza continues unabated for the past eight months, and the Israeli army carries out series of massacres in the most densely populated areas of the besieged enclave, settler lynch mobs attacked several Palestinians and severely injured journalists in Jerusalem on June 5.

“Hundreds of settlers arrived in Jerusalem in buses from the settlements, in order to run wild in the old city and attack Palestinian businesses, in front of the police,” Shir describes the day.

Shir is a member of volunteers from Standing Together, a Jewish-Arab peace movement based in Israel.

Aware about the settler violence this hate march entails, the members of the peace group acted as a “humanitarian guard,” trying to protect native Palestinians from the violent settler crowd, which included teenagers.

The volunteer group of about 30 activists, consisting of both Arab and Jewish members, arrived in the old city in the morning hours, filmed the settler violence and called the police to intervene.

Angry crowds

Since the Israeli police refused to protect Palestinians, the peace group braved all odds and managed to stay in the old city for a few more hours. They witnessed the flag march “until at some point the violence really escalated toward the Palestinian merchants and journalists and the police evicted us by force,” Shir adds.

Shir and her co-volunteers saw journalists being attacked by the mobs. Among the injured were Palestinian journalist Saif Al Qawasmi.

Dozens of them beat him to the ground, kicked him, inflicted a head injury, and stole his phone and filming equipment, he said in an interview.

As photos of this horrendous scene circulated on social media, the Israeli police reported that 18 people, including teenagers, were arrested for assaulting the journalist.

While the Israeli police department said they deployed 3,000 personnel “to secure the march,” Israel's far-right National Security Minister, Itamar Ben Gvir, who also oversees the Jerusalem police, urged the marchers on a radio show a day before the event to go to Al Aqsa.

"We need to hit them in the most important place for them," he told the radio.

"Every year, they said that it was not appropriate and it was not the time. But the opposite is true. If we give ground to them we get an October 7 … We will march through the Damascus Gate and rise to the Al Aqsa, no matter what they think and despite their anger."

Al Aqsa raids

The morning after the march, the Standing Together volunteers took to the streets of the old city to remove racist and violent graffiti and stickers left behind by the settlers.

In previous years, this march has led to the lynching of many Palestinian-owned shops and the injury of hundreds of Palestinians in the occupied East Jerusalem, not only by settlers, most of whom are armed, but also by live and rubber bullets fired by the Israeli police.

Israel’s offensive on Gaza in 2021, which was one of the largest until it launched an even more monstrous war in October this year, was triggered by clashes in Jerusalem during the same hate march that year.

The 11-day military offensive claimed over 260 lives, left 22,000 buildings damaged, and displaced tens of thousands of Palestinians.

What usually follows the march is the raiding of the Al Aqsa Mosque compound by groups of Zionist settlers, escorted by the police. One such raid in 2021, when Israeli police attacked, injured, and arrested Muslim worshippers in the mosque, led to the outbreak of the Gaza onslaught.

According to international law, Israel does not have sovereignty over East Jerusalem and, therefore, over Al Aqsa.

Since Israel seized the old city of Jerusalem from Jordan, the management of the Islamic sites has remained under Jordanian authority.

Jews are forbidden to enter the complex, which they call "the Temple Mount," because the Chief Rabbinate of Jerusalem officially banned them from doing so for religious reasons in 1921.

According to the Jordan-run Islamic Endowments Department in Jerusalem, 812 illegal Israeli settlers entered the Al Aqsa Mosque complex during the Flag March this year.

Eyewitnesses said that they also attempted to perform Talmudic rituals within the complex.