Police employ controversial National Guard to disperse anti-government protesters
Force championed by far-right police minister Ben Gvir was initially formed to quell riots in Arab locales and mixed cities
As protests against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his government ramped up in recent days, police began deploying officers from a newly formed National Guard, who have been accused of using excessive force to quell the demonstrations.
Members of the force — a controversy-laden brainchild of National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir — were filmed in recent days punching, kicking, and hurling protesters to the ground at protests in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv.
On Sunday, as hundreds of demonstrators railed against the cabinet’s no-confidence vote against Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara outside Netanyahu’s private residence in Jerusalem, around a dozen National Guard officers pushed their way to the front of the masses to man crowd control barricades, alongside police already stationed there.
Clashes broke out soon after, with security forces arresting three demonstrators, according to police. At the scene, officers were seen forcefully shoving protesters to the asphalt.
The establishment of a civil defense force — ostensibly to secure the country against internal threats — had long been one of the top demands of Ben Gvir, who returned to his post on Wednesday, after quitting the government in January in protest of the ceasefire in Gaza.
The notion of a National Guard first surfaced during former prime minister Naftali Bennett’s government, spurred by the police’s bungled response to inter-communal riots that broke out in mixed cities in May 2021, during a previous war with Gaza.
The reliance on Border Police officers dispatched to suppress the violence that erupted between Jewish and Arab residents put the latter force under strain, prompting calls to bulk up its personnel with an auxiliary force. But the government’s nascent plans came apart with the collapse of the Bennett-Lapid coalition in 2022.
Upon becoming national security minister later that year, Ben Gvir began to advocate for the formation of a National Guard, with the added demand that the force report directly to him. Contrary to Ben Gvir’s plans to steer the force, the National Guard was eventually folded into the Border Police gendarmerie.
Members of the force dress like regular Border Police officers, and are only distinguishable by patches on either arm with the force’s name and insignia, respectively.
The coalition agreement that Ben Gvir’s Otzma Yehudit party signed with Likud following the 2022 election showed that the far-right minister had sought to subordinate the force directly to his own office.
But his proposal drew flak from ex-police chief Yaakov Shabtai, who said the prospective arrangement would come with “a very heavy price, to the point of harming citizens’ personal security.”
Before his sacking, former defense minister Yoav Gallant also came out against the idea in a letter to Ben Gvir, cautioning him that “there is no place in Israel for private militias.”
Ben Gvir’s initiative became official in January, in an inauguration ceremony at the National Police Academy in Beit Shemesh. Ben Gvir placed the force under the command of Maj. Gen. Nahshon Nagler, formerly the chief of the Israel Police’s Negev precinct.
Speaking at the event, Israel Police Chief Danny Levy defined the aims of the force as “dealing with riots and dealing with crime, with an emphasis on the Arab community.”
Ben Gvir also delivered remarks at the event, praising the National Guard’s establishment as a “realization of my personal vision.” He added that the force would “operate in the Negev and the Galilee, in mixed towns and cities and in every place where there is an issue of governance.”
But now it appears that the force is taking on a more active role in cracking down on anti-government protests, concurrent with a noticeable uptick in police violence against demonstrators in recent days.
“Five days ago, after several weeks of relative calm, a worrying wave of severe and unbridled police violence erupted,” wrote police violence watchdog group Alimut Israel on Sunday in an X post. “Reports of recent incidents continue to stream in, sometimes several days late, as those documenting them manage to recover from the trauma and share what is happening.”
Ben Gvir has often complained that police have not taken a tough enough hand against anti-government protesters, whom he derides as “anarchists,” and in the past has thrown his support behind policemen under criminal investigation for harming protesters.
In August 2024, the minister promoted police officer Meir Suissa to a senior rank, while he was under investigation for ordering stun grenades thrown at protesters a year prior, landing two people in the hospital.
National Guard officers were caught on film in recent days punching and kicking protesters as they sat on the ground, a departure from the typical police conduct of hoisting and dragging them off the road.
During a particularly brutal dispersal of an anti-war protest Tuesday evening in Jerusalem, one National Guard officer could be seen rolling up his sleeve as he approached a kneeling protester who appeared to be trying to aid another demonstrator, only to grab her by the shoulders and fling her away. She landed on her back.
שוטר מג״ב מפשיל שרוול, ניגש למפגינה שכורעת לעזור למפגין שנדחף על הרצפה, הולך מאחורי הגב של המפגינה ומושך אותה אחורה בכל כוחו
ירושלים 18/03/2025
תיעוד: עמוד האינסטגרם של @FreeJerusalem1 pic.twitter.com/F1OJv6cnUR
— אלימות ישראל (@Alimut_Israel) March 20, 2025
Protesters did not go so far as to block roads that night, and, rather, sat on the pedestrian-only Ben Yehuda Street without disrupting traffic — but the demonstration erupted into violence regardless.
Prominent anti-government activist Michal Deutsch told Haaretz that one officer kicked her, breaking her arm, as she tried to prevent him from punching another protester.
Another activist told The Times of Israel that she and other protesters collected some 80 videos documenting police violence from that night alone.
In a statement to Haaretz, the Israel Police said that “all the units in all areas of the country are operating to maintain public order and the safety of citizens,” adding that the police chief “can activate the National Guard, just like other police units, in accordance with operational demands.”
The Times of Israel Community.