Protest leader apologizes for comparing PM Netanyahu to Hitler; protesters clash with police in J’lem

The protests against the government and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu intensified on Wednesday, as demonstrators clashed with police in Jerusalem and one of the protest leaders compared the premier to Adolf Hitler during a speech.

Moshe Radman, one of the figureheads of the anti-Netanyahu protests in recent years, accused the prime minister of “betraying Israel’s future” in a speech outside Netanyahu’s residence.

“We survived Haman, we survived Pharaoh, we survived the British Mandate, we survived Hitler – we’ll survive them too,” Radman said. He continued, “We are moving to resistance and civil disobedience.”

He initially clarified, “We don’t want a single hair on Netanyahu’s head to be harmed – we just want him to get the hell out and sit in prison until his last day.”

In a later statement, Radman acknowledged, “My choice of words was wrong in the heat of the moment,” but added, “Let’s move on, we have a country to save.”

The demonstration near Netanyahu’s residence followed a morning march on Jerusalem which blocked the capital’s main entrance for some time. The police set up barricades on streets leading to the residence, but some protesters attempted to break through, leading to clashes.

Some protesters blocked the central Paris Square intersection with a sit-in, while others used cars to block several main streets in the capital.

The police later called this “a blatant violation of the protest conditions agreed upon in advance between protesters and Israel Police in recent days.”

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Overall, four people were arrested, including one counter-protester. “Over the course of the protest, dozens of participants began to disrupt the public order,” a police spokesman said.

The demonstrations oppose several of the government’s policies and recent decisions by Netanyahu, including the resumption of fighting, which the protesters see as the abandonment of the hostages and the prime minister’s intention to dismiss Shin Bet chief Ronen Bar.

Clashes also broke out between leaders of opposition parties. While taking part in the Jerusalem protest, National Unity party leader Benny Gantz was called a traitor by one of the protesters.

Gantz later wrote on 𝕏 that he “was received with warmth by many of the protesters, who are Israeli patriots who care about the country. Within the crowd, there was also an unrepresentative handful of barn-burners who hate Netanyahu more than they love the country.”

“These are people shameless enough to call me – a man who risked his life under fire for the state in uniform for decades and has been fighting for it in the political arena for six years – a ‘traitor.’ This extremist minority is no less dangerous than the extremists on the other side, and I have no intention of surrendering to them,” Gantz wrote.

This drew the ire of Yair Golan, chairman of the far-left Democrats Party.

He hit back by criticizing that the centrist Gantz had called part of the protesters “barn-burners,” a Hebrew word often used for those seen as irresponsible, and who are ready to burn down the country in the pursuit of political goals.

“Barn-burners? The protesters who took to the streets today are the greatest Israel-lovers I’ve ever met – Zionist, patriotic citizens fighting with all their might to save the country, democracy, and the lives of the hostages,” Golan said.

Gantz’ party later accused Golan of “distorting Gantz’s words, who emphasized the importance of the demonstration and the fact that most of the demonstrators were Israeli patriots.”

Normalizing the use of the word “traitor,” the party said, “alienates precisely the parts of the people who need to be brought together to replace this terrible government.”

In addition to Gantz and Golan, opposition leader Yair Lapid, former Defense Minister and Chief of Staff Moshe (Bogie) Ya’alon, and former Prime Minister Ehud Barak also attended the protest.