hands raised: Protest and Violence toward the State in Israel

Dr. Yair Yassan

The first two decades of the twenty-first century constitute a period of transformation in Israeli democracy. Governmental stability, trust in state institutions, fair representation and minority rights, social equality, and social solidarity have not been among the strengths of this small Middle Eastern state—at least not in recent decades. As in many other democracies worldwide, Israeli society is grappling with a range of complex challenges, including immigration, globalization, police violence, securitization, and related processes. Yet, unlike other democracies, Israel’s distinctive structural and political conditions have fostered the emergence of civic groups with unique characteristics, giving rise to a vibrant, highly engaged, and often contentious political public sphere.

These challenges are rooted, first, in a deeply multicultural reality and a hierarchical citizenship regime characterized by persistent inequalities between marginalized minority groups and privileged populations. Second, they entail a potential—at times realized—for undermining perceptions of state legitimacy. Third, and as a consequence, they may generate violent confrontations between citizens and the state. Frequently, there is a direct relationship between attempts to address challenges that threaten the existing social order and violent clashes between citizens and the state and its agents.

Political violence by citizens in Israel has a long history dating back to the state’s founding. Protests against the Reparations Agreement with Germany and the Wadi Salib events of the 1950s, the Black Panthers’ protests of the early 1970s, the murder of left-wing activist Emil Grunzweig in 1983, and the assassination of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin in 1995 all constitute formative historical episodes of citizen violence directed toward the state.

A broad overview of political violence in Israel in recent years reveals that violent discourse targeting state institutions and symbols in online spaces—mirroring global trends in socio-political engagement via social media—has come to account for an increasingly substantial share of violent expression. Between 2016 and 2017, a 230 percent increase was recorded in the volume of violent online discourse directed at the judicial system, the IDF Chief of Staff, the Police Commissioner, and the media. In 2017 alone, more than five million racist expressions, insults, calls for violence, and abusive messages were posted on Israeli social media platforms—at a rate of approximately one insult every six seconds. A significant portion of this discourse was directed at state institutions. Notably, in 2019, a sharp rise was observed in hate speech targeting former President Reuven (Rubi) Rivlin.

Why, then, is it nevertheless possible to identify grounds for cautious optimism regarding the current state of Israeli democracy? One explanation lies in the growing socio-political awakening of Israeli citizens and in an increasing public recognition that political participation—and the capacity to exert meaningful, legal, just, and fair influence—does not take place solely behind the voting booth curtain once every few years. Rather, it also unfolds through social protest, civic organization, and public demonstration. In contemporary Israel, a growing number of groups are engaged in social struggles against the state for diverse reasons. On the one hand, these struggles have facilitated social change, reform, and civic mobilization; on the other hand, they have also led to violent confrontations, of varying intensity and frequency, with state agents.

At the center of my new book—hands raised: Protest and Violence toward the State in Israel—which is based on my doctoral dissertation, I advance an original conceptual framework for understanding social protest and violent confrontation between citizens and state agents. Drawing on in-depth interviews with dozens of protest activists from diverse sectors, the book offers an insider perspective on the social protests that have shaken Israel in the early twenty-first century and that may further deepen its internal fractures. It provides a comparative, in-depth analysis of three highly contentious yet fundamentally distinct protest arenas in Israel: the radical settler right in the West Bank, Bedouin citizens in the Negev, and Israelis of Ethiopian descent. Each arena is characterized by different historical backgrounds, political circumstances, and causal dynamics, as well as by distinct manifestations of violent confrontation between activists and state agents—confrontations that, at least on the surface, appear to run counter to the collective interests of the groups involved.

In the arena of the radical settler right, the analysis examines a wide range of violent incidents directed at security forces in the context of opposition to settlement evacuations. These incidents vary in scope and intensity and span decades of conflict with the state, including, for example, the evacuation of the unauthorized outpost of Amona in 2006. Among Bedouin citizens in the Negev, the book examines violent confrontations between activists and police and law enforcement authorities arising from struggles over land ownership, planning rights, and the recognition of villages, including Hura, Bir Hadaj, Umm al-Hiran, and al-Araqib. Among Israelis of Ethiopian descent, the primary case analyzed is the protest wave of summer 2015, during which widespread violent confrontations occurred between activists and police forces, against the backdrop of claims of discrimination and police violence directed at youth of Ethiopian descent.

Findings from the radical settler arena identify this group as both a socio-economic power group within Israeli society and, in certain respects, a supra-state authority group—that is, a group that, under specific conditions, demonstrates loyalty to an authority perceived as higher than that of the state. Accordingly, interviewees do not undermine the identification component of state legitimacy, but they do contest components of trust and procedural justice, most notably the legality component, and, to a lesser extent, the state’s effectiveness.

Among Bedouin interviewees in the Negev, violent confrontation is perceived positively by some respondents, primarily as an effective means of raising public awareness of the protest. This positive assessment retrospectively legitimizes violent clashes, which are viewed as a tool capable of forcing the protest into public consciousness—an avenue of resistance that, in their view, would not have succeeded through quieter and nonviolent means.

Among interviewees who are Israelis of Ethiopian descent, ideological justifications for protest center on demands for inclusion and recognition. Alongside experiences of police violence, and in alignment with perceptions of societal and institutional racism, these demands take two principal forms: demands for social inclusion and recognition, and demands for institutional inclusion and recognition.

Oppositional—and at times violent—socio-political protests is not confined to these groups alone. Similar dynamics are evident across additional sectors in Israeli society that fall beyond the scope of this book, including the ultra-Orthodox sector, Arab citizens of Israel, the Israeli political left—particularly in the context of the mass protests against the indictments of former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu—and the disability rights movement.

For many years, Israeli democracy has contended with challenges related to contested legitimacy and low levels of public trust in state institutions. Israel ranks relatively low among OECD countries on indicators such as political rights, civil liberties, democratic equality, civic participation, government effectiveness, the rule of law, perceptions of corruption, and economic equality. Consequently, the multiplicity of protest arenas in Israel—including those not examined in this book—can be understood as reflections of these broader structural conditions. When legitimacy erodes, violent protest may emerge, involving protest activists (often from minority groups for whom questions of legitimacy and trust are particularly salient) on the one hand, and various state authorities on the other. The in-depth interviews and sustained engagement with protest activists on which this book is based offer a candid and intimate view of the motivations underlying challenges to state legitimacy and help explain the slide toward violent protest, which has become increasingly common and volatile in recent years.

This book addresses these complex dynamics at a moment when their relevance may be greater than ever. In an era marked by civic-democratic awakening and governmental instability, the global COVID-19 pandemic—ongoing at the time of writing—has not only challenged governmental stability across many states, but has also intensified public distrust in political representatives and state institutions. In Israel, following a period of two years marked by four national election cycles (April 2019–March 2021), the political system appears more fragile than at any point in recent memory. The protests against former Prime Minister Netanyahu at his official residence on Balfour Street likely contributed decisively to the shift in public opinion that ultimately led to his temporary removal from office, while also reflecting the profound societal rift between his opponents and supporters. Mutual incitement and violent rhetoric between the two political camps continue to find expression in street-level violence—violence that appears poised to escalate further, with no clear endpoint in sight.

Dr. Yair Yassan is a lecturer in the Program for Conflict Management at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev and a recipient of the President of Israel Award for Excellence and Scientific Innovation (2017).

This text is based on his first book, hands raised: Protest and Violence toward the State in Israel, published in 2022 by Resling Press.