Cops threw stun grenades straight into crowd in 2023 protest, bodycam footage shows

Tel Aviv police used excessive force against anti-government demonstrators to please Ben Gvir, according to report; 2 protesters required surgery after direct hits

Police use stun grenades during a demonstration against the government's controversial justice reform bill, in Tel Aviv on March 1, 2023. (JACK GUEZ / AFP)
Police use stun grenades during a demonstration against the government's controversial justice reform bill, in Tel Aviv on March 1, 2023. (JACK GUEZ / AFP)

Previously unseen police body camera footage that aired earlier this week showed cops hurled stun grenades straight into crowds of people, injuring several protesters during a stormy Tel Aviv anti-government demonstration two years ago.

The March 2023 demonstration marked the first time that police had used stun grenades against anti-government protesters, and later led to the indictment of five officers.

The footage was part of an exposé aired Sunday by the Kan public broadcaster, which implicated former national security minister Itamar Ben Gvir in the unusually violent police response to the anti-overhaul protest.

By the time police dispersed the demonstration that day, a total of 11 protesters needed medical treatment, two of them were hospitalized. Officers arrested an additional 39 demonstrators.

According to the investigation, the then-minister’s visit to a police forward command center the same morning pressured Kobi Shabtai, then the chief of police, into telling the Tel Aviv district commander to give the order to use stun grenades.

In addition to the grenades, police deployed horses and water cannons against the crowd of protesters blocking the road.

After receiving a call from the district commander, Maj. Gen. David Filo, officers at the scene rushed to grab the grenades from their vehicle. The police began chucking them into the crowd, against regulations demanding restraint with the crowd control weapon.

Israeli police deploy horses and stun grenades to disperse Israelis blocking a main road to protest against plans by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s new government to overhaul the judicial system, in Tel Aviv, Israel, Wednesday, March 1, 2023. (AP Photo/Oded Balilty)

Two protesters were hit in the face and suffered life-altering injuries. Another was badly hurt after taking a stun grenade to his shoulder.

Shahar “Zahiro” Mor, an anti-government activist, suffered permanent hearing damage when his right ear was mangled by a stun grenade. He later underwent ear reconstruction surgery at Tel Aviv’s Ichilov Hospital.

“My hearing won’t ever be the same,” said Mor in an interview on the segment. “The tinnitus and dizziness that you get whenever you go from sitting to standing, and things like that. These are probably things that will remain for my entire life.”

Even after being made aware that they had injured protesters, police continued to use excessive force against the crowd. Amid the chaos, one demonstrator approached one of the commanding officers and urged him to send help because “someone lost his ear.”

But the officer, Chief Superintendent Meir Suissa, ignored the request and instead continued to order junior officers to “clear them [the protesters] out by force.”

Body camera footage revealed that Suissa himself injured another protester with a stun grenade he threw.

Noa Ron-Geffen, who was injured by a stun grenade during an anti-government protest on March 1, 2023, appears on Israel’s public broadcaster in a segment that aired January 26, 2025. (Screenshot/ Kan)

“I felt something burning in my cheek, but I didn’t attach importance to it at first. Only when my friend saw me a second afterwards and told me that I’m bleeding, then I put my hand [to my face], lowered it and saw there was blood,” said Noa Ron-Geffen. She received plastic surgery to treat the resulting disfigurement.

Suissa was one of the five policemen later investigated by the Department of Internal Police Investigations (DIPI) in the protest’s aftermath. Last summer, the unit filed an indictment against him and the other four officers, charging him with reckless and negligent behavior.

A protester shouts at Israel Police officer Meir Suissa (left), who threw a stun grenade at a Tel Aviv rally, on March 9, 2023. (Carrie Keller Lynn/Times of Israel)

Despite the criminal case, he was promoted by Ben Gvir from superintendent to chief superintendent, and was given command of his own police station in south Tel Aviv.

Ben Gvir pushed back against the indictment, alleging the decision was “tainted by political motives and political pressure.

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