Israeli anti-austerity movement repressed

This video from Israel is called Tel Aviv Protest: Police Arrest Social Justice Leader Dafni Leef.

From daily The Morning Star in Britain:

Clashes over Israeli police brutality

Sunday 24 June 2012

by Our Foreign Desk

Israeli police arrested 85 protesters after clashes with thousands of activists in Tel Aviv on Saturday night.

Over 6,000 demonstrators had gathered to protest against the arrest of 12 activists on Friday including Dafni Leef, who led last year’s demonstrations against rising housing prices and decaying public services, and well-known actor Tomer Sharon.

Demonstrators blocked main roads and scuffled with riot squads at the weekend, while police claimed that others had shattered the windows of five banks.

At one bank, protesters charged inside and planted a tent, the symbol of the social protests.

Police claimed that they had only made Friday’s arrests to prevent looting but Ms Leef accused police of brutality, saying that they had bruised and humiliated her when they detained her on Friday and opposition politicians backed her up.

“The Israel police is behaving as it would in a police state rather than a democratic state,” Meretz party leader Zehava Gal-On told the Jerusalem Post.

“It has become a political repressive instrument of the government, against all groups that protest against it,” adding that the police “are serving the government rather than the law.”

Labour Party leader Shelly Yechimovich said: “It turns out that the government and its operational branches have decided not to enable the existence of democratic protests this summer.”

See also here.

Writers Scrap Tel Aviv Events To Protest Arrests. Forward/Haaretz: “Following the violence of the police against demonstrators for social justice, and many other violent acts over the last week, we have decided to cancel our participation in the White Nights events scheduled to take place this Thursday, under the sponsorship of the Tel Aviv municipality”: here.