Right-wing activists clash with Meretz MKs in Hebron

An organized tour of the West Bank cities of Hebron and Kiryat Arba by the left-wing group Breaking The Silence and Meretz MKs encountered noisy protests from right-wing activists Sunday, the Hebrew news site Walla reported.

Well-known figures of the right-wing camp, such as Baruch Marzel, Noam Federman and Itamar Ben-Gvir, accompanied the tour with the stated purpose of disrupting it, shouting slogans, abuse and accusations of bias at MKs Zahava Gal-On and Nitzan Horowitz. “Why did you not go to Haifa to visit the soldiers attacked in the lynch?” shouted Ben-Gvir in reference to Saturday’s incident in which two soldiers on leave were attacked by a group of Arab Israelis.

Breaking The Silence is an Israeli nongovernmental organization established by IDF veterans. It collects testimony about cases of abuse of Palestinians by Israeli forces from soldiers who served in the West Bank and Gaza.

The tour aimed to protest school trips to heritage sites in Hebron organized by the Education Ministry, which were criticized for being ideologically driven. Meretz chairwoman Zahava Gal-On stressed the need to highlight the Palestinian angle rather than the settler one.

Meretz MKs decried the protest and said the IDF and police securing the tour “hadn’t lifted a finger” to restrain the demonstrators.