A Jerusalem Faction protest on Wednesday morning on Route 4 near the entrance to Bnei Brak ended in unusually bloody scenes that sparked a major political confrontation between Shas leader Aryeh Deri and National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir. The demonstrators had blocked the main highway in protest over arrests of yeshiva students, and during the police evacuation many were seen injured, bruised, and bleeding on the asphalt.
Deri issued a public attack on Ben Gvir, saying, “Itamar Ben Gvir, wake up!” He argued that police had not acted this way against anti-government protesters on Kaplan Street, but were now using force against people “who cry out that they were turned into criminals only because they study Torah.” Deri said Shas opposes protests, but cannot remain silent in the face of what he called severe injustice and violence, and urged Ben Gvir to stop the police brutality against “bnei Torah.”
Ben Gvir replied that he would hold an urgent discussion after what he described as a recent rise in cases where stun grenades were used against civilians outside the rules. He said such weapons should be used only in exceptional cases and according to police procedure, warning, “If the use is not limited to these cases, there will be no stun grenades in the police.” He then turned on Deri, accusing the ultra-Orthodox parties of indirectly enabling the situation by protecting Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara. “From the first day of the government I demanded that the attorney general be dismissed,” he said, adding that Deri and his allies kept her in place and that this cost the ultra-Orthodox public dearly.
Deri answered again, accusing Ben Gvir of lying and avoiding ministerial responsibility. “Itamar, a lie repeated over and over does not become the truth. It remains a lie,” he wrote, saying Shas had supported dismissing the “anarchist” attorney general from day one and that all its MKs had signed the demand. He added that Baharav-Miara had already been dismissed for a year, and insisted that the violence in Bnei Brak was carried out by the police under Ben Gvir’s authority, not by the attorney general.
Ben Gvir then escalated the exchange by sending Deri a screenshot of a report from Behadrei Haredim headlined that he had asked coalition leaders to sign a call to fire Baharav-Miara, but the ultra-Orthodox had refused. He ended with the jab, “Our memory is excellent.”
