Getting mobbed by far-right teens at Flag March was distressing, but no surprise |
As a working adult who hasn’t set foot inside a middle school for years, I found it surreal and a bit ridiculous to suddenly become the subject of curses and insults hurled by preteen boys, about a dozen of whom encircled me Thursday in the Muslim Quarter of Jerusalem’s Old City, taking swipes at my phone and kicking me in the shins.
I had come into their crosshairs a few moments earlier when I pulled out my phone to record a large group of religious Zionist youth dancing gleefully while chanting “death to Arabs” under the arch of the Damascus Gate.
This scene was familiar to me from the past two times I’ve covered the annual Flag March through the Old City, meant to mark the reunification of Jerusalem under Israeli rule during the Six Day War, but which has increasingly become a display of anti-Arab racism and far-right ultranationalism.
By now, the scene felt like a set piece, with the same players putting on the same performance and hitting the same cues as previous years. I’d had a similar sense of déjà vu upon entering the Old City earlier that morning as I passed old Arab men hunched outside shuttered businesses while Jewish teens roved around the area.
As in years past, the march was led through the Damascus Gate and into the heart of the Muslim Old City by adolescents primed for trouble. Behind them were ultranationalist politicians such as National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, their bodyguards, and organized groups of teenage boys flying the banners of their yeshivas.
Trailing behind were parents with young children, who entered the Old City as the sun began to set.
Violence at the march isn’t an especially new phenomenon. Year after year of attacks on the press … participants view journalists as legitimate targets, which means wearing press tags handed out by police that are really nothing more than giant “kick me” signs.
Related: Chants of ‘death to Arabs’ at Jerusalem Day march as Ben Gvir flies Israeli flag on Temple Mount
But this was the first time such violence was directed at me. The march had yet to even begin when several boys with long sidelocks and knee-length tzitzit noticed I was filming the racist chant, clocked me as a reporter from my press lanyard and camera, and quickly became furious.
“Get out of here,” one sneered, covering my phone lens with his kippah. I tried to pay them no mind, behaving as if they weren’t there, but it soon became impossible to film, so I retreated to an awning near other reporters.
A handful of youths from the same group approached me as I continued recording. One boy, without so much as peach fuzz on his baby face, rammed into me with his entire weight. Being scrawny and just half my height, his shove didn’t do much except cause me to........