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Right-wing Flag March in Jerusalem’s Old City features arrests, racist chants
(JTA) — At a right-wing parade celebrating Jerusalem Day, police arrested both participants and protesters, while marchers assaulted Palestinians and once again chanted racist slogans.
The parade is an annual event that takes thousands of mostly religious Jewish marchers through Jerusalem’s Old City, including its Muslim Quarter. It celebrates the reunification of Israel’s capital following the Israeli capture of the city’s eastern district in the 1967 Six-Day War. The march is known to attract groups of far-right participants, and police ask Arab Jerusalemites to shutter their shops along the parade route.
Outbreaks of violence have often accompanied the event. In 2021, clashes surrounding the parade, and a subsequent rocket attack by Hamas, preceded an 11-day conflict between Israel and Hamas in Gaza, as well as riots and violence in Arab-Jewish cities within Israel.
This year, hundreds of Palestinians along the Gaza border protested the march, and the Israel Defense Forces said some threw explosive devices toward the security barrier. Israeli forces responded with live fire and tear gas.
During the march, two participants were arrested for throwing stones and water bottles at Palestinian journalists covering the event, some of whom were injured. There were additional scuffles between marchers and Palestinians. As in past years, marchers also chanted racist slogans, such as “Death to Arabs” and “May your village burn.”
Ahead of the march, 10 left-wing protesters were arrested, including some who blocked Route 60, a central West Bank thoroughfare used to travel from Israeli settlements to Jerusalem. American Jews were among the group that blocked the highway, according to a statement from the Center for Jewish Nonviolence, which was one of the protest organizers. The statement said the activists “are supporting Palestinian communities across Jerusalem through participating in protests, documenting anti-Palestinian state-settler violence in the streets of the Old City, and providing a supportive presence to our partners.”
A dozen politicians participated in the march this year, including far-right government ministers such as Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich, and members of their parties. Yuli Edelstein, a lawmaker and former minister from the Likud Party, also attended, and wrote on Twitter, “There’s nothing more exciting and right than celebrating 56 years since the liberation and unification of Jerusalem together with tens of thousands of our brothers and sisters.”
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Israel’s Netanyahu Hopes to ‘Taper’ Israel Off US Military Aid in Next Decade
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu speaks to the press on Capitol Hill, Washington, DC, July 8, 2025. REUTERS/Evelyn Hockstein
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in an interview published on Friday that he hopes to “taper off” Israeli dependence on US military aid in the next decade.
Netanyahu has said Israel should not be reliant on foreign military aid but has stopped short of declaring a firm timeline for when Israel would be fully independent from Washington.
“I want to taper off the military within the next 10 years,” Netanyahu told The Economist. Asked if that meant a tapering “down to zero,” he said: “Yes.”
Netanyahu said he told President Donald Trump during a recent visit that Israel “very deeply” appreciates “the military aid that America has given us over the years, but here too we’ve come of age and we’ve developed incredible capacities.”
In December, Netanyahu said Israel would spend 350 billion shekels ($110 billion) on developing an independent arms industry to reduce dependency on other countries.
In 2016, the US and Israeli governments signed a memorandum of understanding for the 10 years through September 2028 that provides $38 billion in military aid, $33 billion in grants to buy military equipment and $5 billion for missile defense systems.
Israeli defense exports rose 13 percent last year, with major contracts signed for Israeli defense technology including its advanced multi-layered aerial defense systems.
US Republican Senator Lindsey Graham, a staunch Israel supporter and close ally of Trump, said on X that “we need not wait ten years” to begin scaling back military aid to Israel.
“The billions in taxpayer dollars that would be saved by expediting the termination of military aid to Israel will and should be plowed back into the US military,” Graham said. “I will be presenting a proposal to Israel and the Trump administration to dramatically expedite the timetable.”
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In Rare Messages from Iran, Protesters ask West for Help, Speak of ‘Very High’ Death Toll
Protests in Tehran. Photo: Iran Photo from social media used in accordance with Clause 27a of the Copyright Law, via i24 News
i24 News – Speaking to Western media from beyond the nationwide internet blackout imposed by the Islamic regime, Iranian protesters said they needed support amid a brutal crackdown.
“We’re standing up for a revolution, but we need help. Snipers have been stationed behind the Tajrish Arg area [a neighborhood in Tehran],” said a protester in Tehran speaking to the Guardian on the condition of anonymity. He added that “We saw hundreds of bodies.”
Another activist in Tehran spoke of witnessing security forces firing live ammunition at protesters resulting in a “very high” number killed.
On Friday, TIME magazine cited a Tehran doctor speaking on condition of anonymity that just six hospitals in the capital recorded at least 217 killed protesters, “most by live ammunition.”
Speaking to Reuters on Saturday, Setare Ghorbani, a French-Iranian national living in the suburbs of Paris, said that she became ill from worry for her friends inside Iran. She read out one of her friends’ last messages before losing contact: “I saw two government agents and they grabbed people, they fought so much, and I don’t know if they died or not.”
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Report: US Increasingly Regards Iran Protests as Having Potential to Overthrow Regime
United States President Donald J Trump in White House in Washington, DC, USA, on Thursday, December 18, 2025. Photo: Aaron Schwartz via Reuters Connect.
i24 News – The assessment in Washington of the strength and scope of the Iran protests has shifted after Thursday’s turnout, with US officials now inclined to grant the possibility that this could be a game changer, Axios reported on Friday.
“The protests are serious, and we will continue to monitor them,” an unnamed senior US official was quoted as saying in the report.
Iran was largely cut off from the outside world on Friday after the Islamic regime blacked out the internet to curb growing unrest, as videos circulating on social media showed buildings ablaze in anti-government protests raging across the country.
US President Donald Trump warned the Ayatollahs of a strong response if security forces escalate violence against protesters.
“We’re watching it very closely. If they start killing people like they have in the past, I think they’re going to get hit very hard by the United States,” Trump told reporters when asked about the unrest in Iran.
The latest reported death toll is at 51 protesters, including nine children.