Left-wing demonstrators with ‘bloody hands’ protest outside Religious Zionism party HQ

Members of the Arab-Jewish left-wing movement Standing Together blocked the entrance to the far-right Religious Zionism party’s headquarters in Shoham, east of Tel Aviv, on Wednesday morning, yelling slogans accusing chairman and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich of funding settler terror against Palestinians.

Clad in white outfits splattered with red, the demonstrators held up red-stained hands and displayed posters in Hebrew and Arabic declaring “Smotrich finances, the settlers burn [things down], the blood is on the hands of the government.”

As finance minister and in his secondary role as a minister in the Defense Ministry, Smotrich has strongly supported settlements, including wildcat outposts. Many attacks on Palestinians have come from such illegal outposts.

Videos shared by Standing Together showed demonstrators sitting with their backs to the glass doors of the office, chanting “The blood is on the hands of the government,” while party employees filmed them from inside.

“Finance Minister Smotrich finances the outposts from which [extremist settlers] go out to burn villages, in order to expel people from their homes. As long as settler terror continues, we will have no security. We will not stop fighting until it stops. Only peace will bring security,” one protester yelled.

In a post on X, Standing Together stated that its activists had gone to Religious Zionism’s headquarters because the party enables violence against Palestinians.

“We arrived this morning at the headquarters of the Religious Zionism party, a party that transfers funds and supports the activities of terror farms in the West Bank. Finance Minister Smotrich is transferring the money of Israeli citizens to settler terror that burns villages, dispossesses and expels people from their land and homes, and burns our future,” the group said.

Religious Zionism party shares footage of what it says are protesters with hands painted blood red outside party headquarters pic.twitter.com/VqtFRdnM35

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“The Palestinians are the victims of this policy, but so are we, the citizens of Israel. With our money, they are funding terror instead of taking care of our welfare and rehabilitation. We will not stop fighting until they dismantle the [outpost] farms and stop the terror. Until there is Israeli-Palestinian peace,” it added.

Recent years have seen a major uptick in settler violence against Palestinians in the West Bank. Smotrich, who has pushed hard to expand West Bank settlements and has stated that it is “morally wrong” to compare settler attacks to terror against Israelis, has faced international sanctions over the rising violence.

In its own statement, Religious Zionism accused the “far-left activists” of attempting to “violently break into” the headquarters, said that party staff were “trapped inside and instructed not to leave their offices,” and claimed that the demonstrators were eventually dispersed by police. The police, however, said that officers arrived on the scene within minutes but that the protesters had already left.

“Police won’t allow incitement, violence, or any violation of the law under the cover of protest,” the police stated.

Religious Zionism blamed the incident on the leadership of the anti-Netanyahu opposition bloc.

“We demand that the police investigate the incident and ensure the safety of party workers in Israel. There is no place for violence in the political arena,” Religious Zionism stated, calling on opposition figures Gadi Eisenkot, Naftali Bennett and Chili Tropper to “condemn the violence of the far-left, which is motivated by incitement against the settler community.”

In a subsequent post on X, Smotrich doubled down, insisting that “this grave incident is yet another expression of the fact that the harsh incitement against the right has practical consequences on the ground.”

Israelis have grown increasingly concerned about political violence, especially given recent incidents of vandalism and threats against news outlets, as well as this week’s savage beating of an elderly man who took down a banner calling for the release of Yigal Amir, the far-right assassin of prime minister Yitzhak Rabin.

A recent poll found that 39 percent of Israelis ranked “violent conflict between groups” in Israel as one of the country’s leading threats, alongside a nuclear Iran.

The anti-Netanyahu parties, and many of their supporters, lay blame for this inflammatory discourse at the prime minister’s feet, pointing to the far-right politicians in his cabinet (including a national security minister who was previously convicted of incitement and support for terrorism), in addition to the provocateurs his lawmakers liaise with, and the mass Haredi anti-draft protests that his coalition partners endorse and that have targeted the homes of public officials, sometimes destructively.

For his part, Netanyahu has railed against incitement by critics of the government.

While Smotrich and Netanyahu have both warned against political violence, coalition members, including some from Smotrich’s own party, were involved in a violent riot at the IDF’s Sde Teiman base in 2024.

Ben Sales contributed to this report.