Thousands
of Israelis join violent, racist march through Jerusalem’s Muslim quarter
State-backed
flag day march shut down Palestinian life in Old City to celebrate Israel’s
1967 annexation of East Jerusalem
Emma
Graham-Harrison and Quique Kierszenbaum in Jerusalem
Mon 26 May
2025 21.09 CEST
Thousands of
Israelis have joined a state-funded march through the Muslim quarter of the Old
City in Jerusalem, where large groups chanted racist slogans including “Gaza is
ours”, “death to the Arabs” and “may their villages burn”.
The annual
march, paid for and promoted by the Jerusalem city government, celebrates
Israel’s capture and occupation of East Jerusalem and its holy sites in the war
of 1967. The Israeli takeover is not recognised internationally.
The
Jerusalem municipality advertises the event, known as the flag march, as a
“festive procession”, part of a broader programme of events celebrating the
“liberation” of the city.
The march
has been marred by racism and attacks on Palestinians for years, and is
preceded by a campaign of violence in the Old City that in effect shuts down
Palestinian majority areas, particularly in the Muslim Quarter.
From before
midday on Monday small groups of young Israeli men attacked and harassed
shopkeepers and passersby inside the city, spitting at women in hijabs,
stealing from cafes, ransacking a bookshop and entering at least one home by
force.
“Shut now,
or I can’t protect you,” a police officer told cafe owner Raymond Himo, when he
protested about teenagers in religious Zionist dress stealing drinks. On
Monday, shops had mostly closed by 1pm, hours earlier than in previous years,
with residents barricaded in their homes.
Aviv
Tatarsky, a researcher with the Ir Amim non-profit that works for an equitable
Jerusalem, said: “It deprives people of their economic livelihood, makes them
feel unsafe in their surroundings. Symbolically it sends a message: ‘You don’t
belong here, we are the ones who own this place.’”
From midday,
groups of Jewish men inside the city shouted racist chants including “may their
villages burn”, “Mohammed is dead” and “death to Arabs”.
Those
slogans were picked by larger groups of mostly men that began arriving in the
late afternoon. Women approached the Western Wall on a separate march, which is
largely divided by gender for religious reasons.
One large
group arriving at the Damascus Gate chanted “Gaza is ours”, and carried a large
banner reading “Jerusalem 1967, Gaza 2025”, in effect threatening full military
annexation of the strip to echo the capture of East Jerusalem.
Another
banner read a “without a Nakba there is no victory”, referring to the forcible
expulsion of about 700,000 Palestinians when the state of Israel was created in
1948.
The
procession is coordinated by “Am K’Lavi”, a non-profit whose only activity is
organising the flag day march. It is chaired by Baruch Kahane, the son of Meir
Kahane, a Jewish supremacist Rabbi who founded the Kach party. Banned as a
political party in Israel in the 1980s under anti-terror legislation, it is now
a far-right movement.
Some
marchers wore T-shirts with the party’s symbol of a clenched fist in a star of
David. Others wore shirts with the names of their high schools, which had
organised group outings to the march.
Despite the
history of violence at the march there was a relatively light police presence
inside the Old City, and they did little to protect many of the Palestinians
targeted with violence.
Activists
from the group Standing Together, who stood as human shields in front of
attackers protected only by purple gilets identifying them as members were
often the only barrier preventing the violence escalating.
The
far-right national security minister Itamar Ben-Gvir was among the crowds
arriving at the Old City around sunset. He had earlier made an inflammatory
trip to pray at al-Aqsa mosque in its compound, where officially Israel does
not permit Jewish believers to carry out religious rituals.
The prime
minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, hosted a cabinet meeting in Silwan, in occupied
East Jerusalem. He ignored warnings from the Shin Bet security service that it
would be an inflammatory move, Israeli media reported.
The flag
march is already seen as a violent and deeply provocative expression of Jewish
control of Jerusalem, which has in the past triggered broader conflict.
Violence at the same event helped spark the 11-day war between Israel and Hamas
in 2021.
Danny
Seidemann, an Israeli attorney specialising in the geopolitics of Jerusalem,
described Netanyahu’s cabinet meeting as political “pyromania”.
“The ridge
to the south of the ramparts of the Old City, literally in the shadow of the
Old City, is indeed the location of biblical Jerusalem. But it is also a
contemporary Palestinian neighbourhood,” Seidemann said.
“The past is
being weaponised by biblically motivated settlers to displace Palestinians,
demolish their homes and recreate their vision of a renewed pseudo-ancient
Israel. This is the site, the most contested and volatile in Jerusalem, is
where Netanyahu has decided to ‘celebrate’.”
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