At Jerusalem’s Flag March, Ben Gvir’s Israel was on full display
Israeli right-wing activists celebrate Jerusalem Day at the Western Wall, in Jerusalem’s Old City, 14 May 2026
Oren Ziv and Charlotte Ritz-Jack report in +972 on 14 May 2026:
Starting in the early afternoon on Thursday, thousands of Jewish Israelis poured through Jerusalem’s Damascus Gate and began their yearly rampage through the Muslim Quarter of the Old City, celebrating Israel’s seizure of East Jerusalem in 1967.
The crowd — made up largely of religious Zionist youth — roamed around looking for people to harass and attack. Because relatively few Palestinians were present by the time the march began, they turned much of their attention to journalists and Israeli left-wing activists: interfering with filming, spitting, shoving, snatching phones, and chanting slogans including “may your village burn,” “Muhammad is dead,” “a Jew has a soul, an Arab is a son of a bitch,” and “death to Arabs.”
“This day is a very special day to me: it’s the day the Jews got control of the Western Wall,” Nathan, an American Jew from Brooklyn who preferred not to give his last name, told +972. “It’s very sad to me that after the [1967] war Arabs were allowed back — that was a big mistake, and I hope they won’t make those mistakes in Gaza and in Lebanon.”
Since its first iteration in 1968 — when followers of ultranationalist Rabbi Zvi Yehuda Kook took to the streets to dance and sing their way toward the Western Wall in celebration of Israel’s annexation of East Jerusalem — the Flag March has become a mainstream event sponsored and promoted by the Jerusalem Municipality. Over the past 15 years in particular, there has been a distinct spike in far-right agitation surrounding the march, with far right-wing Jewish groups systematically harassing Palestinian shopkeepers and residents in the Muslim Quarter.
“Tomorrow there will be chaos,” Abu Anab, a Palestinian who owns a small stand selling toys just inside Damascus Gate, told +972 on Wednesday, a day ahead of the march. “We’re closing to prevent problems. There will be many people provoking us.”
Many stores had planned to close at 3 p.m., around the time police generally shut down the Muslim Quarter. Yet by 11 a.m. on Thursday, soldiers were already telling shop owners to close down. The few who had not yet shuttered hurriedly packed up their belongings.
Bracing for violence
Before the march began, left-wing Israeli activists had gathered around Damascus Gate. Around 10 a.m., some 100 people from the anti-racism group Tag Meir distributed flowers to Palestinians in an already mostly empty Old City. “This is a way for us to affirm humanity,” Jack Chomsky, a Tag Meir volunteer in his 70s, told +972. “I admire our Arab neighbors so much for sticking it out.”
Police began limiting entry to the Old City shortly after 9:30 a.m. Still, both Israeli and Palestinian activists from Standing Together, wearing purple vests reading “humanitarian guard,” managed to enter, as did plainclothes activists from groups including Looking the Occupation in the Eye, Rabbis for Human Rights, and the Faithful Left. Members of the anti-occupation group Free Jerusalem marched in the opposite direction of the right-wing crowds, holding signs against the “ongoing Nakba” and flags with the colors of the Palestinian flag, before police dispersed them and arrested one activist.
For weeks, these groups had recruited hundreds of volunteers, ranging from teenagers to the elderly, in anticipation of the violence. “What’s supposed to happen here soon is a desecration,” Yonatan Rothschild, a Haredi volunteer offering protective presence throughout the day, told +972 ahead of the march. “I came to preempt the violence in solidarity with my Palestinian neighbors.”