Far-right MK caught on cam staging heckling of his own interview on Gaza rockets
In another TV appearance, Otzma Yehudit’s Almog Cohen enters screaming match with a second man who needled him
Otzma Yehudit MK Almog Cohen was caught on camera asking an aide to tell a passerby to come on screen during the interview to heckle him and criticize the government over Palestinian rocket fire from Gaza.
Channel 13 revealed on Wednesday that prior to his interview the day before, Cohen was approached by a man on the street in Sderot, who urged the government to take stronger action over the bombardments.
Before he was meant to go live on air, he called his aide over and said: “Tell him to interrupt the broadcast when I am talking.”
During the interview, the man indeed entered into the frame, and said: “We are not a slaughterhouse for terrorism in the State of Israel.”
“We are not ducklings they can massacre. We were born and grew up in the State of Israel. We will defend it,” he said, as Cohen nodded along and agreed.
Responding to the report, Cohen said he did not know the man, but after speaking to him beforehand, believed that “it was right for him to interrupt the broadcast in order to give voice to the cries of southern residents.”
In another incident, this time on Wednesday, Cohen engaged in a screaming match on live television with a Sderot resident in the middle of an interview with Channel 12, after the latter also attacked him over the bombardment. This encounter did not appear scripted, and Cohen became visibly upset over it.
During the broadcast, Cohen assailed his own government’s policies on Gaza attacks, which he and his party view as lackluster.
At one point a young man stepped in between Cohen and the camera, handed the far-right lawmaker a bag of pita bread, and asked: “How do these pita help me?”
He was referencing National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir’s decision in January to end pita-baking at jails holding Palestinian prisoners, saying he wanted to deny imprisoned terrorists perks including fresh-baked pitas. The minister has been widely mocked for what many view as a populist, social media-ready move. Opposition leader Yair Lapid has mockingly referred to him since as the “pita and TikTok minister.”
“How do these pitas help me? We need security. Where is my security?” he argued.
Cohen tried to calm the man, asking him to “look at me,” to which the man responded: “Why should I look at you, how will that help me? What have you given me up until now?”
“I want to ask you if you understand that you and your party leader brought this upon us,” the man shouted, apparently referring to accusations that Ben Gvir and other hardline members of the government have repeatedly aggravated tensions with Palestinians, leading to increased violence.
“Who did you vote for?” Cohen asked.
“Why is that relevant? I was born and raised here in Sderot, I fought in Operation Protective Edge,” the man shouted back, referencing the 2014 conflict between Israel and Hamas in the Gaza Strip.
The exchange heated up, and those surrounding became involved and tried to separate the two.
Cohen accused the man of a “provocation.” Pointing to a child Cohen shouted: “That kid over there doesn’t interest you. The only thing that interests you is that the government will fall.”
“I fought for that kid!” the man shouted at Cohen, to which the lawmaker yelled in response: “I also fought. I fought more than you! You can check that!”
The man started walking away, at which point Cohen shouted at him: “Take these provocations away from here! Don’t dance on our blood! The nerve!” This led the man to turn back and yell that it was Cohen who was “dancing on our blood” and telling him to get out of town. “This is my city!”
“Provocateur, provocateur!” Cohen yelled back.
The fight then broke up before a clearly agitated Cohen continued the interview.
According to the Israel Defense Forces, Palestinian terrorists launched 104 projectiles from Gaza during the flare-up on Tuesday and early Wednesday morning, including one that hit a construction site in Sderot where three people were wounded — one moderately and two lightly.
Eventually responding to the rocket attacks from Gaza, the IDF struck 16 targets belonging to Islamic Jihad and Hamas terror groups across the Strip overnight, which was labeled as a “feeble” response by Otzma Yehudit.
The party announced it would skip votes at the Knesset throughout the day, and instead, Ben Gvir and its members decamped to the southern city of Sderot.
Following the confrontation, Cohen put out a statement claiming the man was an activist from the Black Flag anti-government protest group, though it was not clear what he was basing that assertion on.
“I’m saddened that Black Flag activists are using the tragedy we have experienced in the south as a platform for provocations. This struggle is nonpartisan and not connected to left or right,” he said.
The ruling Likud party on Wednesday slammed Ben Gvir for his party’s decision to boycott Knesset votes, telling him if he did not like the way Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu runs the government he could leave.
Firing back, Ben Gvir said Otzma Yehudit would continue to refrain from voting with the coalition until Netanyahu adopted more hardline policies, and fumed over his exclusion from security deliberations on Tuesday’s fighting between Israel and Gaza-based terror groups.
The dust-up was the latest in a series of fissures to emerge in Netanyahu’s hardline right-religious government, which has faced mounting internal pressure over its currently shelved plans to overhaul the judiciary, along with the skyrocketing cost of living, burgeoning violent crime, and deepening conflict with the Palestinians.
The Otzma Yehudit boycott came as Ben Gvir faced increased pressure over rising terror attacks and a sharp jump in murders since he came into office in December after running on a platform of keeping citizens safer.
Hours before the Otzma Yehudit announcement, Israel and the Gaza terror groups agreed to a ceasefire, Al Jazeera and Reuters reported after a daylong flare-up in violence sparked by the death of prominent Palestinian Islamic Jihad member Khader Adnan while on a hunger strike in an Israeli prison.
The Times of Israel Community.