Police Must Protect Protestors from Violence
- ACRI
- May 4
- 2 min read
At the end of April 2025, two serious incidents took place in which citizens were attacked by organized right-wing groups. At a protest in Be’er Sheva on April 28, 2025, and then days later at a screening of the joint Israeli-Palestinian Memorial Day Ceremony at a Reform synagogue in Ra’anana, participants were the victims of verbal abuse and physical violence. In both instances, in spite of prior warnings and the open spread of incitement on social media in the days leading up to the events, the police did not properly prepare in advance of the events, or act effectively to protect participants. Police presence was sparse, no effective barriers were established between protesters and attackers, and no information was collected about the attackers for further investigation. In Be’er Sheva, the police even ordered the peaceful protesters to disperse instead of protecting them, thereby allowing the violent attackers to thwart a legal protest.
In the letter to the Police Commissioner, Sivan Tahel, Director of ACRI's Freedom of Protest and Expression Department, wrote that the police have a legal obligation to protect the safety of protesters and to prevent violence against them. She emphasized that failures by the police to exercise their authority in situations requiring it is tantamount to sanctioning the violence, and it encourages attackers to continue: "The lax response and incompetence of the police during these events send a message of tolerance for acts of bullying, violence, and assault, and symbolize the police force's abandonment of its basic duties to uphold the rule of law and protect the lives and well-being of citizens exercising their constitutional rights to freedom of expression and protest."
The letter further emphasized that these two cases are not isolated incidents, but are part of a broader and issue of systematic avoidance by law enforcement agencies of actively protecting freedom of expression and protest, while turning a blind eye to known violent organizations of extreme right-wing groups: "These failures are not merely negligence; they raise serious concerns about an unwritten policy of selective enforcement.” The letter called for the establishment of binding guidelines to ensure the active protection of protesters, including effective separation on the ground between protesters and attackers, identification of and enforcement against attackers, and investigations in all cases of assault.
It should be noted that this is not the first time that ACRI has approached the police about this very issue. In a previous letter to the then-Police Commissioner on May 10, 2022, we provided documentation of 11 incidents that took place between 2020-2022, in which protesters were physically attacked, injured, and even had dangerous objects thrown at them—all in front of police officers who refrained from protecting the attacked protesters, did not create a barrier between attackers and those being attacked, and sometimes even refused to identify the attackers or accept complaints from the victims. In the police response at that time, it claimed that "in the abovementioned events, the police acted in a balanced manner" and that "it has not been proven that this is a trend, and it certainly has not been proven that it is a deliberate trend by the police to allow acts of violence against protesters."
ACRI’s letter, May 4, 2025 (Heb)
ACRI's letter, May 10, 2022 (Heb)
Police response, May 29, 2022 (Heb)
