A protest and counter-protest held in Bnei Brak on Tuesday evening turned ugly after one person allegedly sprayed pepper spray at a police officer, and police used force in an attempt to disperse haredi protesters from the scene.
On Monday, the organizers of the anti-government protests against judicial reform announced that they would be holding a demonstration outside the home of MK Moshe Gafni, a member of the haredi United Torah Judaism party (UTJ).
"The demonstration will be the opening salvo in a broad process against the involvement of haredi Knesset members in advancing laws to create a coup d'etat, and we will first be turning our attention to Gafni, who recently called for the Supreme Court to be 'removed from its pedestal' and demanded the swift passage of the Override Clause," the organizers stated.
Dozens of protesters turned up in Bnei Brak on Tuesday evening, as promised, and were confronted with hundreds of haredi residents of the city, who were kept apart from the protesters by a heavy police presence. Protesters flew LGBT flags and one person brandished a mock Tablets of Stone with a new version of the Ten Commandments, including, "Thou shalt not oppress," and "Thou shalt not coerce."
However, around an hour after the protest began, police alleged that someone dressed in haredi garb had targeted a police officer with pepper spray. Police then began to push back the crowds of haredim, with footage showing use of force, including police punching and shoving haredim with no obvious rationale for the heavy-handed response. One person was arrested.
"Just the same as ever," the caption above the Twitter video reads, "it's fine to beat the blacks [i.e. haredim] but not the whites [the secular]. In Tel Aviv they mollycoddle [the protesters], and in Bnei Brak they bash them. That's the way things are when the elites control all the state's institutions."