Riots in Jerusalem

In 2015, I was nearly beaten by a far-right mob in Jerusalem. Thursday night’s riot in the holy city reminded me a lot of that evening. Thankfully, this time, nobody died, but that same feeling of tension, anger and violence was in the air.

My run in with the mob began at a small vigil to protest against the murder of a family at the hands of Palestinian terrorists. For some reason they decided we were ‘left-wing protesters’ — the police were able to encircle us but could do nothing to stop the bottles being thrown, the spit, the curses. Our crowd of attacks moved on, beating any Arabs they came across. A few streets away, two Israelis were stabbed to death by a Palestinian, inspiring a series of opportunistic attacks that became known as the ‘Intifada of the knives’.

This week’s violence involved the Jewish extremist Lehava organisation, founded to ‘fight intermarriage’.