Journalist and political commentator Amir Segal delivered a sharp monologue attacking Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara and the leaders of the Kaplan protest movement, accusing the law-enforcement system of applying one standard to some groups and another to others. He argued that the acceptance of road blockades during the protest against the judicial overhaul in 2023 paved the way for the current traffic disruptions caused by other groups.
Segal addressed secular Israelis directly, urging them to stop what he called selective outrage over traffic jams and daily disruptions caused by blocked roads. “Please do not be shocked and tell me today that pregnant women were stuck in traffic, or that soldiers had their bus blocked,” he said. In his view, anyone who did not condemn such actions in 2023 is now hypocritical for objecting to them.
He said blocking major transportation arteries is a criminal offense, and rejected focusing only on the financing or organization of the current protesters, arguing that the problem is much deeper. Referring to the ultra-Orthodox public, he said they understand the basic principle of equality, even if formal core studies are not universal in that sector. “They know the basic principle, and that is equality, not only equality in enforcement, but also in non-enforcement,” he said.
Segal directed his main criticism at Baharav-Miara, saying that if the attorney general had not normalized this “crazy and criminal act,” then no one, whether using the slogan of “a day of disruption for democracy” or “a day of blockades for Judaism,” would be able to paralyze the country. He added that the legal system would never have tolerated such blockades if they had been led from the outset by ultra-Orthodox protesters, but because the first demonstrators displayed her posters and belonged to her camp, the system chose to whitewash the acts. He concluded by asking what ordinary citizens had done to deserve having their lives made miserable by hundreds of thousands of people.
