Slippery Slope

Tal Samo is suing the police for damages following his arrest for waiving an Israeli flag at a demonstration against the IDF attack on Gaza in 2009.

(Hebrew)

According to the 2012 annual report on the state of human rights in Israel, compiled by the Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI), new regulations were adopted in Tel-Aviv and Jerusalem which significantly limit the right to protest, by requiring special permits in order to set up tents as well as for other protest actions.  In Tel-Aviv, the municipality acted in an unequal manner toward activists with different agendas.  In Jerusalem, a protest encampment set up by social activists was dismantled, while its occupants’ personal belongings were confiscated. (ACRI)

(Hebrew – ACRI)

The Police is summoning social activists who participated in last year’s social protests for interrogation, without informing them of the reason for the interrogation. (Ha’aretz)

The city of Tel-Aviv-Yafo will compensate a protester after city inspectors tried to prevent him from filming a small demonstration outside of city hall.

(Hebrew – News1)

A new video documents Lt. Col. Shalom Eisner using his rifle to hit at least four protesters, who did not attack him previously. The movie, shot by Palestinian TV, disproves Eisner’s claims that protesters attacked him and broke his fingers.

A new report by the Association for Civil Rights in Israel shows that the police consistently restricts the freedom of expression and freedom of assembly of people trying to protest through various methods: evicting tent cities, arresting protesters and forcing them to promise not to attend future protests, and summoning activists to warning talks by police or Internal Security officers.  In addition, many cases of police officers violating the law by confronting protesters without name tags and sometimes even with masked faces have been documented.  The report refers to the situation of Palestinians from the Occupied Territories as well.  The Association points out that the Israeli authorities deny Palestinians their freedom of speech and freedom of assembly, by declaring every protest as an illegal gathering and dispersing it using various crowd dispersal methods.

Tel-Aviv University said it would not allow the operation of the protest tent set up by students at the main entrance to the campus, because of ”security considerations”.

(Hebrew)

Officials of the Binyamin Regional Council complained about a Jerusalem high school teacher, following her participation in a demonstration at the settlement Anatot two weeks ago. In a letter that the Council sent, jointly with residents of the settlement, to the principal of the Smith Jerusalem High School for the Arts, they demanded that the teacher should be reprimanded.

(Hebrew)

A “B’Tselem” report states that the IDF automatically addresses every demonstration in the occupied territories as “disturbance to public order”, and in doing so the IDF denies Palestinians the Freedom of Protest.

(Hebrew)

A formal Palestinian source said Israel threatened former head of Palestinian Intelligence Tawfiq Tirawi, warning him that IDF soldiers will shoot at his guards, if he will participate in protests against the Separation Wall.