Police launch probes into cops who told protester ‘I’ll rape your mother,’ shoved MK
Internal investigations announced after officers yelled offensive statement at Jerusalem anti-government demonstrator, manhandled Labor’s Naama Lazimi at Tel Aviv hostage rally
The Department for Internal Police Investigations (DIPI) said Sunday it had opened probes into a police officer who was filmed telling a demonstrator that he would rape his mother, and other officers who clashed with a lawmaker.
In a statement, the DIPI said it would contact the protester and Labor MK Naama Lazimi, and that the incidents would be investigated in depth.
At the weekly protest at Jerusalem’s Paris Square, near Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s official residence on Saturday evening, an officer was filmed cursing and threatening a protester he detained, telling him “I’ll rape your mother” and calling him a “son of a bitch.”
DIPI also said it was investigating officers who were filmed in a confrontation with Lazimi at a protest in Tel Aviv.
Lazimi was shoved and grabbed by police officers, despite the parliamentary immunity granted to her as a Knesset member.
She told media outlets that “policemen assaulted” her and pulled her hair while she was trying to help another protester.
שוטר תועד מקלל מפגין שנעצר. המשטרה: "התנהלות השוטר במקום אינה עומדת בקנה אחד עם נורמות השיח וההתנהלות המצופות מכל שוטר, גם במצבים סוערים מעין אלו, ולכן היא תיבדק ותטופל בהתאם"@VeredPelman (צילום: נועם גורדון) pic.twitter.com/AueLapYq2k
— כאן חדשות (@kann_news) June 29, 2024
When Lazimi stepped between a group of protesting hostage families and police, the latter group dragged her away.
The politician later tweeted that violence against family members of the hostages and activists for the hostages’ return has become routine.
“This is the government’s police force and not a public police force,” she charged, “but they won’t scare me or us. The police will be restored and rebuilt.”
ח"כ נעמה לזימי נהדפה בידי שוטרים בהפגנה בת"א@hadasgrinberg pic.twitter.com/EGsVE3R1Tc
— כאן חדשות (@kann_news) June 29, 2024
Police claimed on Saturday that Lazimi had been trying to prevent cops from confiscating the phone of a protester arrested for lighting a fire on the road.
“Contrary to her claims about allegedly being hurt by police officers, and in order to prevent the misleading of the public and defamation of cops, we clarify that the Knesset member actually is using her immunity to disturb officers trying to do their job,” the force said. “We regret that a public official is behaving provocatively.”
In a separate incident, another protester in Jerusalem was filmed being forcefully arrested by a group of police, one of whom pinned him to the hood of a car and momentarily grabbed his neck, as surrounding protesters shouted not to choke him.
Rallies calling for a hostage deal and early elections were held Saturday night in Tel Aviv, Jerusalem and other cities across Israel, in a continuation of a weekly practice, but they were marred by clashes with police and several violent arrests.
The protests, larger and more impassioned than usual, took place against the backdrop of renewed efforts by the United States to restart hostage negotiations and intensifying anger at Netanyahu after he told the right-wing Channel 14 news last week that he was only prepared to sign off on a “partial deal,” which would allow Israeli forces to continue fighting in Gaza. (He subsequently said he remained committed to Israel’s latest proposal for a deal to see all hostages freed.)

Clashes also erupted in Tel Aviv, where a rally focused on the plight of the hostages was followed by a fiery protest led by families of captives outside the headquarters of the powerful Histadrut labor federation.
The protesters lit a fire outside the office and urged the union chairman, Arnon Bar-David, to call a general strike and shut down the economy in order to pressure the government into reaching a deal with the Palestinian terror group Hamas to release the 120 hostages it is holding captive in Gaza.
Anti-government groups have also said they are organizing a shutdown of businesses and commerce on July 7, nine months to the day of Hamas’s shock assault. Protest groups accuse the government of failing to prevent the attack and of abandoning citizens in the aftermath.

The war in Gaza erupted after Hamas’s October 7 massacre, which saw some 3,000 terrorists burst across the border into Israel by land, air and sea, killing some 1,200 people and seizing 251 hostages amid acts of brutality and sexual assault.
It is believed that 116 of the 251 hostages seized by Hamas on October 7 remain in captivity.
The IDF has confirmed the deaths of 42 of those still held by Hamas, and one more person has been listed as missing since October 7 and their fate is still unknown. Hamas has also been holding two Israeli civilians who entered the Strip in 2014 and 2015, as well as the bodies of two IDF soldiers who were killed in 2014.