Left-wing protesters swarmed senior religious Zionist figures Rabbi Yigal Levinstein and Israel Zaria in Tel Aviv late Tuesday night, with Israel Police officers having to rescue the two as they were chased, Israeli media reported.
Footage was shared on social media by Israeli journalist Yinon Magal, quoting someone who was with Levinstein at the time who said, “Dozens of protesters tried to physically attack us with sticks and their hands. If the police hadn’t shielded the rabbi with their bodies, it would have ended badly.”
הגעתי אמש לראש יהודי בתל אביב, לחזק את ידידי ישראל זעירא. ישראל ויתר על חיים נוחים ובית פרטי ביישוב שהוא סביבתו הטבעית, ובא לגור בתל אביב רק כדי להרבות אהבה ולחזק את הזהות היהודית. זה לא מפריע לכל מי שרוממות הליברליזם בגרונם לתקוף אותו. מטרתי אתמול בתל אביב כמו בכל הפעילות שלי… https://t.co/QFG2Sdqe81
— הרב יגאל לוינשטיין (@HaravIgalLevins) September 20, 2023
“You are nothing, you have no God!” protesters shouted, according to N12.
“You are scum, you are not Jewish. Get out of here!”
Others shouted “Go away, fascist. Go back to the settlements, you don’t belong here,” according to N12.
Levinstein, a controversial rabbi who heads the Bnei David pre-military academy in Eli, had come to Tel Aviv to lecture at Rosh Yehudi, a religious Zionist NGO, headed by Zaria, that seeks to promote Jewish identity. “I arrived last night at Rosh Yehudi in Tel Aviv to support my friend Israel Zaria,” Levinstein wrote on X, formerly Twitter.
“My goal yesterday in Tel Aviv... was to continue to explain the processes so that all of Israel would understand how good people can fall for progressive incitement and become aggressive in the name of peace.”
“I thank God and the police, who protected us and saved us from a pogrom,” Zaria told N12.
“There was spitting, pushing, and they tried to hit us with Israeli flags. It wasn’t severe violence, but there was definitely a chase.”
He continued, telling N12: “We were surprised by the intensity of their hatred, their blunt words, and the violent behavior of a mob that shouldn’t act like this. A group of intelligent and serious people who behave like savages.”He added, “We understand that they came to scare us [due to] the mass prayer we will hold at Dizengoff Square on Yom Kippur.”
Smotrich: Blood will be on Gantz, Lapid's hands
Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, who heads the Religious Zionist Party, took to X to criticize the incident and the opposition for being silent.
“Last night, we saw a sight seemingly taken from darker times in Jewish history,” Smotrich wrote. “A rabbi and religious citizen were brutally attacked by a violent mob because of their beliefs. [National Unity leader MK Benny] Gantz and [opposition leader Yair] Lapid are silent, and it will end in blood – and this blood will be on their hands.”
חזינו אמש מראה שנראה כאילו לקוח מתקופות אפלות בהיסטוריה היהודית. רב ואזרח דתי מותקפים באופן ברוטלי ע״י המון מוסת ואלים בגלל אמונתם. גנץ ולפיד שותקים וזה ייגמר בדם והדם הזה יהיה על ידיהם.
— בצלאל סמוטריץ' (@bezalelsm) September 20, 2023
“I am infuriated every time the extremist left-wing protesters reach a new low,” National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir said in a statement, saying they managed to “turn a pure and unifying” event into “a show of hatred and blatant incitement.”
He added: “The policy outlined for the Israel Police is to have zero tolerance towards these incidents of serious assault.”
“Under Israeli flags and cries for democracy, equality, and liberalism, an incident took place that, if it had been held in any other city in the world, would have been called antisemitic,” said Religious Zionist Party MK Simcha Rothman.
“They do not recognize our right to live in [the West Bank]. They do not recognize our right to live in Tel Aviv. They do not recognize our right to exist at all,” wrote Religious Zionist Party MK Zvi Sukkot.
Likud MK Tally Gotliv took it one step further, comparing the incident to Kristallnacht and left-wing protesters to Nazis.
“Anyone who does not condemn the videos of this humiliating horror, whether on the Right or Left, is part of the destruction of Judaism. History always repeats itself,” she wrote.
Far-right Noam MK Avi Maoz said he was “shocked to the depths of my soul” by the incident.
“There is no red line that was not crossed in this barbaric protest against the Jewish state and the elected government.”
One member of the opposition who criticized the incident was National Unity MK Ze’ev Elkin, who called it “the complete opposite of true liberalism and the preservation of the values of freedom of expression, freedom of religion, and democracy.”
הסגנון הזה של הפגנה זה ההפך הגמור מליברליזם אמיתי ומשמירה על הערכים של חופש הביטוי , חופש הדת והדמוקרטיה.אנחנו עלולים להידרדר לתהום של שנאת אחים וקרע בעם, שיסכן את עצם קיומה של המדינה היהודית. זה הזמן לעצור!עמית סגל, [Sep 20, 2023 at 07:53]תיעוד נוסף מההפגנה אתמול בתל אביב pic.twitter.com/VZfQdaPLzo
— Zeev Elkin (@zeev_elkin) September 20, 2023
However, Labor Party leader MK Merav Michaeli defended the protesters, calling their actions legitimate.
“When he (Levinstein) comes to Tel Aviv, protests against him are legitimate,” she said at the ITIM conference. “He brainwashes his students in yeshiva. It’s a good thing they protested against him because what he is working for is trying to destroy the State of Israel.”
Judicial reform protest leader Moshe Redman also weighed in on the incident, describing Levinstein as one of the “most racist, and homophobic rabbis in Israel” and Rosh Yehudi as “a missionary organization.”
“The public came with a clear statement – no more silence in the face of messianic missionary work under the auspices of ‘liberal Judaism,’” Redman said, but added that many of the statements made at the protest against Levinstein shouldn’t have been made.
“A number of statements were said that shouldn’t have been, against Levinstein, despite him being a person who strives every day to undermine the existence of Israel as a Jewish and democratic state, since we are a protest that advocates non-violence,” he said. “These statements do not represent the wonderful Israel-loving public that came out to demonstrate yesterday.”
The controversial claims of Rabbi Yigal Levinstein
Levinstein has made numerous controversial statements in the past.
Back in 2018, he wrote that homosexuality should be eradicated like AIDS. A staunch advocate of gay conversion therapy, Levinstein delivered a lecture in which he criticized LGBT views as “madness.”
“I am convinced that on the day that people will disagree that this thing [homosexuality] is normal, we will save all of human society, and physiological science and psychological science will not have any problem in dealing with this problem, we just need to define it as a problem,” he said at the time.
In 2017, he said religious women lose their religious values when serving in the IDF and become “crazy” and “non-Jews.”
Jeremy Sharon contributed to this report.