Uncategorized
Israeli lawmaker grabs megaphone from NYC protester, who files a police report
(JTA) — A far-right Israeli lawmaker grabbed a megaphone from a protester on a New York City street and rushed away, leading the protester to file a police report against him.
The altercation on Friday came ahead of this year’s Celebrate Israel Parade, which is expected to attract a large turnout of Jewish and expatriate Israeli anti-government protesters. Israeli right-wing lawmakers in town for the parade have been dogged by protesters who oppose the Israeli government’s efforts to weaken the judiciary.
A number of videos on social media show legislator Simcha Rothman, a key architect of the judicial overhaul, walking along a street in New York on Friday night and chatting with companions while being followed by Israeli protesters heckling him in Hebrew.
“Go back home and repair everything you’ve done, repent for what you’ve done and perhaps we will forgive you one day,” an unidentified female protester says in a video posted by Shany Granot-Lubaton, an Israeli expatriate in New York who is a leading organizer of local anti-government protests. “In the end, we’re all Jews.”
Until that moment, Rothman had not responded to the small coterie of protesters. But at that point, he spun around, wrested away the megaphone and rushed away.
מיד אחרי שחכ רוטמן חטף את המגפון מהפעילה בניו יורק. הפעילה שנפגעה, סטודנטית לתואר שני בקולומביה ועו”ד במקצועה, בדרכה להגיש תלונה במשטרת ניו יורק כעת.
אי אפשר שלא להשוות בין המראות המזעזעים של האלימות כלפי המפגינים בחדרה והאלימות המזעזעת של חבר הכנסת רוטמן כלפי הצעירה שהפגינה… pic.twitter.com/CdcTDQZFo3
— דמוקרטTV (@Democrat_TV) June 3, 2023
A separate video posted by an Israeli news outlet, Democrat_TV, shows the protesters scuffling with Rothman’s entourage, and with Rothman eventually returning the megaphone. The outlet identified the protester as a lawyer studying for a master’s degree at Columbia University. Granot-Lubaton later posted a photo of the police report the protester filed. An officer will assess the complaint, but the fact that it was filed does not necessarily mean any charges will follow.
Rothman is one of a number of prominent and controversial Israeli lawmakers who are in New York to join Sunday’s parade. Israeli-led protests against those lawmakers, led by a movement called UnXeptable that supports mass anti-government demonstrations in Israel, already led one Israeli minister to cancel a speech in Los Angeles. UnXeptable has appealed to the parade’s organizers, the New York Jewish Community Relations Council, not to allow leading members of Israel’s governing coalition to join the proceedings.
Rothman, a member of the far-right Religious Zionist Party, is a leading target of the protests. He also backs changes that would make Israel’s Law of Return more restrictive. His participation in a panel in Israel in April convened by the Jewish Federations of North America descended into pandemonium when protesters kept interrupting him.
In a statement after the New York City incident reported by The Jerusalem Post, Rothman decried the protesters as “violent.”
“At some point, the demonstrators realized we were not moved by them, at which point they put a megaphone up to our ears (an attack) and shouted,” he said. “The security guards and I repeatedly told them to stop and to stay away, and they continued. After all the warnings, I took the megaphone that the demonstrator had pushed into my ear — without touching [the demonstrator], of course. After about half a block we reached a place [where] we could go inside and wait for the police.”
Bezalel Smotrich, the finance minister who leads Rothman’s party, said in a tweet that Rothman was the victim of violence and called on U.S. and Israeli authorities to prosecute the “trolls” who have pursued him.
In addition to the mass weekly protests in Israel, the judicial overhaul has sparked the censure of Diaspora Jewish organizations that customarily refrain from commenting on Israel’s internal politics.
In March, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu suspended the advance of the reforms under pressure of the protests, international opprobrium and dissent within his own Likud Party. He has not yet brought the reforms back to the table, although he is under pressure from far-right partners and has said he plans to do so. Protests against the overhaul have continued unabated.
—
The post Israeli lawmaker grabs megaphone from NYC protester, who files a police report appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
Uncategorized
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.”
Uncategorized
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.”
Uncategorized
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.