After police violence during a protest this morning on Highway 4 near Bnei Brak, MK Meir Porush called for an urgent discussion in the Knesset’s National Security Committee about what he described as discriminatory enforcement by police during demonstrations. Porush, a member of the committee, sent a letter Wednesday morning to committee chair MK Tzvika Fogel demanding that police commanders be summoned to explain the events and the broader enforcement policy.
In his letter, Porush said that for years, especially during left-wing protests, police had shown what he called a pattern of tolerance. He wrote that police had been lenient toward demonstrators who blocked major roads and disrupted daily life, and had used polite loudspeaker announcements while “the system sanctifies the right to protest.”
He argued that the approach changes completely when the demonstrators are ultra-Orthodox. “With these protesters there is no containment, no patience and no attempt to understand,” he wrote. Porush said the situation reached “a dangerous and bloody peak” this morning, describing the dispersal of the Highway 4 protest near Bnei Brak as “brutal and unprecedented violence” and not a routine effort to clear a road or maintain public order.
The letter says he saw disturbing documentation from the scene, including stun grenades fired directly at protesters sitting on the road, baton blows, aggressive dragging, and injured demonstrators lying bloodied on the asphalt with torn clothing. Porush demanded that the committee hold an immediate hearing so police officials could account for the violence and for what he called a selective and discriminatory enforcement system shaped by the identity of protesters and the subject of their protest.
