Man arrested after Tel Aviv anti-government protest for allegedly insulting cop; police use water cannon at Jerusalem demo

Police arrest a man for allegedly insulting a public worker following an anti-government protest on Tel Aviv’s Habima Square, with central Tel Aviv police chief Avi Ofer accusing the man of calling him a “zero.”

Officers drag the man away to a police car and drive away as fellow anti-government activists protest that the incident does not constitute grounds for arrest.

המשטרה עיכבה פעיל מחאה בתל אביב, לאחר שלפי החשד העליב את מפקד תחנת לב תל אביב, סגן ניצב אבי עופר. כשעופר התיישב לכתוב את הדו״ח הוא אמר לשוטריו: ״הוא אמר לי שאני אפס. על העלבת עובד ציבור. כוסאמא שלו״ pic.twitter.com/R5pr6cxosr

— Yair Foldes (@Yair_Foldes) May 9, 2026

The protest is organized by the Movement for Quality Government, which has petitioned the High Court against the government’s efforts to weaken the judiciary, codify the Haredi exemption from military service and avoid forming a state commission of inquiry into the Hamas-led onslaught of October 7, 2023, which sparked the war in Gaza.

The protest attracts hundreds of people, with a large group marching over from the memorial outside City Hall where Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin was shot dead in 1995.

Some of the protesters chant: “October 7– the Netanyahu massacre.”

Dani Elgarat, whose brother Itzik was kidnapped during the onslaught and killed in captivity in Gaza, accuses Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his ministers of seeking to distract the public from the government’s failure to prevent the Hamas invasion and massacre.

Elgarat cites as an example Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich’s comment this week that the last government’s inclusion of an Arab party was “a thousand times worse” than the current government’s “tactical failure” regarding October 7.

“This is not a tactical failure,” says Elgarat. “This was and still is a holocaust, and we demand the truth.”

Elgarat, who recently joined the left-leaning Democrats party, also says the government’s failure to crack down on “Jewish terrorism” against Palestinians in the West Bank will ultimately rob the state of its ability to protect its own citizens.

“When human beings are attacked because of their identity, it’s terrorism,” he says.

“It’s not a ‘price tag,’ and it’s not ‘local organizing,’ and these are not ‘bad seeds’,” says Elgarat, ticking off euphemisms for settler attacks, which occur on a near-daily basis but are rarely prosecuted.

“This is Jewish terrorism, and the state that doesn’t enforce the law equally loses the ability to protect its citizens,” he says.

Beside the stage, a smaller group of left-wing protesters stand in silence, holding signs that call to “stop the genocide” in Gaza and “release Palestinian hostages” from prison in Israel.

When a speaker who follows Elgarat repeats the bereaved brother’s call for a state commission of inquiry, a woman from the left-wing group starts calling through a megaphone for a state probe of Israel’s “torture camps” for Palestinian inmates.

People standing nearby, from the main bloc of protesters — including a woman in a Democrats shirt — try to silence the left-wing protester, telling her she is intruding on the main demonstration. A shouting match ensues, and fades away as the demonstration disperses.

In Jerusalem, hundreds of people participate in an anti-government demonstration. Police use a water cannon to disperse protesters in the road.