When Hebrew University professor Nilly Mor joined the throngs of demonstrators protesting near Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Jerusalem residence on March 20, she was stunned by the brutal police response — which included the use of a controversial crowd control weapon called “Skunk” that has been increasingly seen at anti-government demonstrations.
“They sprayed us directly with a strong jet of foul-smelling water. We were completely drenched… from head to toe in the putrid liquid,” said Mor, who was demonstrating against the government’s renewed military offensive in Gaza.
Protesters who have come into contact with Israel’s Skunk liquid weapon have described the nauseating odor as a “mix of horseshit and sewage.”
“The moment the bo’ash started firing… everyone jumped to their feet and started running away. You can smell it from 100 [yards],” said Tel Aviv resident Itay Manor, using the Hebrew word for “Skunk.”
Skunk — usually sprayed from a high-pressure water cannon truck — has long been a trusted tool of the police, who claim that its use reduces the need for more violent crowd control methods. But use of the liquid on civilians often conflicts with the force’s own regulations, to the detriment not just of protesters but of entire neighborhoods.
“It’s a tool with the goal of punishing the collective. It’s not discerning, it’s not exact,” said Sivan Tahel, a field researcher for the Association for Civil Rights in Israel.
For years, police made regular use of Skunk against Palestinian and Haredi demonstrators, particularly in Jerusalem. But in summer 2023, they used it during the peak of mass demonstrations against the government’s planned judicial overhaul, prompting concern that it had become the new normal.
Those protests quieted down after the Hamas atrocities of October 7, 2023, when Gazan terrorists butchered some 1,200 people in southern Israel and took 251 hostage to the Strip. At that point, the nation put politics aside and pulled together in the face of the tragedy. But now, with the war dragging into its 19th month and the ruling coalition again setting its sights on a judicial overhaul, anti-government demonstrations have resumed — and with them, the use of Skunk liquid by police.
Skunk has a smell so intense that it can shut down businesses and schools for days. Police guidelines forbid spraying it into “enclosed buildings” and onto “roofs and balconies.” They specify that its use in built-up and dense areas is only as a last resort.
Regardless, law enforcement has a history of flouting these protocols by spraying the liquid onto buildings indiscriminately, especially in Palestinian and Haredi neighborhoods of Jerusalem.
The spray has proven useful for police in quickly dispersing crowds, causing fewer severe injuries than stun grenades or rubber bullets. But those hit with Skunk find that the powerful odor sticks with them long after the protest they participated in has ended.
“It took me two or three showers and laundries to get rid of the smell,” said Manor, who was only lightly doused in 2023 during a Jerusalem protest against the judicial overhaul. “By 10:30 p.m., I was back home in Tel Aviv and took a shower. My wife still made me sleep on the couch.”
Mor recounted the stench lingering on her skin for three days and taking over a week to finally wash out of her hair.
A police spokesperson said that the method allows cops to “avoid resorting to physical force or employing more potentially harmful means.”
But even without Skunk, blasts from water cannons often knock people down and can send them flying, resulting in injuries.
Mor charged that the last time police brought out Skunk, on March 20, they used “direct shots” of the liquid “without warning, without declaring the protest illegal, on senior citizens.”
When operating any water cannon, regardless of the liquid it uses, police are prohibited from directly spraying people who are less than 20 meters (66 feet) away, and are only permitted to target the “subject’s center of mass and/or lower body.”
But despite the rules, many protesters have been hospitalized for eye and skull injuries due to water cannon blasts.
The overwhelming force of the water cannon, which police use routinely in Tel Aviv protests, is not nearly as effective at dispersing protests as Skunk liquid blasts.
“It took the Skunk only two minutes to get rid of everyone [in Jerusalem],” Manor said about the 2023 anti-overhaul protest near the Knesset. He was fearful at the time that police would henceforth rely on it more when dealing with anti-overhaul demonstrations after realizing its efficacy.
Mor, a Jerusalem resident and regular protest-goer, said she has felt an uptick in police use of Skunk in recent years.
While protesting for a hostage deal after Hamas’s murder of six hostages in summer 2024, she took a direct hit from the cannon, and she had another close call during the demonstrations that rocked Jerusalem last month.
She noted that Skunk disperses most protesters except a “core group” of activists “who have been hit so many times, so they’re less fazed.”
‘Dunked in sewage’
In March 2023, police confronted protesters blocking Karkur Junction with a water cannon that protesters claimed sprayed Skunk. If true, this was the first time police used the liquid against anti-government protesters.
Police classified the machine used at Karkur as a regular water cannon, rather than one containing Skunk. But those on the ground reported a putrid smell.
“People began to shout and run in all directions. I smelled a terrible odor. I was also sprayed with something very smelly that felt like I was dunked in sewage,” said Tamar Ben-Aryeh, who regularly demonstrates at Karkur Junction.
Police said they used “approved water dispersal liquids” at Karkur Junction that day, without further elaboration.
Four months later, in Jerusalem, as the Knesset passed the first law in the judicial overhaul package, police sprayed protesters blocking Begin Road with the pungent liquid.
Ben-Aryeh, who was in the capital that day, picked up on a more potent stench in Jerusalem than she did in Karkur.
“I came a few hours after the police used the Skunk in Jerusalem, but there was still that smell everywhere, much worse than sewage,” she said.
A harmless substance?
Created by Israel’s Odortec, a privately held firm specializing in scent-based repellents for law enforcement, the foul-smelling Skunk liquid debuted in 2008 in the West Bank village of Nil’in when Border Police used it on Palestinian protesters demonstrating against the expansion of the West Bank security barrier.
In 2014, reports began filtering in from East Jerusalem of police spraying Skunk in Palestinian neighborhoods. Around the same time, US media reported that police departments in St. Louis, Missouri, and elsewhere had begun purchasing the spray.
Jerusalem police expanded their application of the method in 2017, using it to scatter demonstrations against the military draft in ultra-Orthodox neighborhoods.
On the surface, Skunk liquid is composed of water, yeast and baking soda, fermented in an oxygen-deprived environment.
While Odortec’s website claims the liquid is “perfectly safe to consume,” its safety regulations instruct that if it is ingested, one should “consult a physician who will decide on need and method for emptying the stomach.”
Promoting Skunk as a safe yet effective means of dispersing protests, Odortec and the Israel Police emphasize its nontoxicity and purported 100% eco-friendliness. However, some of those who have been sprayed with the substance have reported skin irritation, shortness of breath and headaches upon contact.
Odortec owner Haim Davidian touted the weapon as a safer alternative to harsher crowd control means.
“Human rights organizations should say thank you and not attack the product, because it means that fewer people get hurt in demonstrations,” he argued to the Haaretz daily.
In some cases, police have been accused of using Skunk as collective punishment against entire communities, rather than to disperse protests.
“In the COVID [lockdown] period, they made entries into neighborhoods and used Skunk… to make the area smell, ensuring people wouldn’t leave their homes. Those sprays [as deterrence] are against police regulations. It’s forbidden to spray the liquid directly into an enclosed space, but they do it regardless,” alleged Tahel, the rights researcher.
As recently as this week, Haaretz’s Nir Hasson reported that police had used the Skunk again in East Jerusalem’s Issawiya neighborhood with no clear motive. Police did not respond to a request for comment.
בואש מסתובב ומרסס לכל עבר בשכונת עיסאוויה. בית אחד עלה באש בשל ירי רימון גז. עד כה המשטרה לא הוציאה שום הודעה על ידויי אבנים או עימותים שהיו בכפר. pic.twitter.com/VRNl4vH6Lc
— نير حسون Nir Hasson ניר חסון (@nirhasson) April 9, 2025
Unacceptable, except in Jerusalem
Official statistics obtained by the Shomrim nonprofit news outlet show that over the past two years, Skunk has been primarily employed by police in the Jerusalem District, which includes Beit Shemesh, a city with a large Haredi population.
Jerusalem police’s liberal use of the liquid has drawn criticism not just from Israeli human rights groups but also from Haredi lawmakers (Hebrew), right-wing legal organizations and even National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir (Hebrew) — before he joined the government.
When he was still a private attorney, Ben Gvir petitioned the High Court to bar police use of Skunk against Haredi protesters, arguing it qualified as a form of discrimination against the Haredi public.
The court rejected the petition, citing instances of the weapon being used against non-Haredi protesters, though the verdict criticized police for “unjustified harm to demonstrators” and emphasized that Skunk should function as a last resort.
Ben Gvir hasn’t inveighed against Skunk since he took the national security portfolio. Instead, he recently pushed for police to use more force against anti-government protesters.
Salah Diab, a resident of Sheikh Jarrah who has been protesting evictions of Palestinian families from the flashpoint Jerusalem neighborhood since 2008, became intimately familiar with Skunk, which he and other Palestinians dub kharara, derived from the Arabic word for “shit.”
Police used copious amounts of Skunk in protests and around the area in general when the neighborhood became a hotspot for clashes between Palestinians and Israeli settlers.
“In 2021, there was a strong, strong smell. The people coming here [to protest] looked like they wanted to die because they didn’t have fresh air,” Diab said. “The smell lasts for a week, and it gets into cars too.”
After police targeted far-right protesters with Skunk near Jerusalem’s Chords Bridge in 2021, Mayor Moshe Lion spoke out unequivocally against the dispersal tactic.
“There is no place for the use of Skunk in residential neighborhoods,” Lion said, adding that the practice would be seen as “disproportionate and unacceptable in any other place in Israel except Jerusalem.”
Nonetheless, in mainstream discourse, there has been only muted public outcry against the putrid substance.
In July 2023, when Jerusalem police turned the weapon on anti-overhaul demonstrators, many of whom had come from Tel Aviv, more than a few were likely getting their first whiff of Skunk.
“The Israeli protesters finally got a taste of how the Palestinians get treated in the West Bank,” said Manor. “We can’t ignore it, ’cause it will eventually bite us in the ass.”
The Times of Israel Community.
