Otzma Yehudit MK Almog Cohen was caught on camera telling a colleague to ask a passerby to come on screen during the interview and criticize the government over Palestinian rocket fire from Gaza.
Channel 13 revealed on Wednesday that the day before his interview, Cohen was approached by a man on the street in Sardot who urged the government to crack down on the bombing.
Before he was about to go live on air, he called his colleague and said: “Tell him to interrupt the broadcast while I’m talking.”
During the interview, the man actually entered the frame, and said: “We are not a slaughterhouse for terrorism in the State of Israel.”
“We are not ducklings they can commit genocide. We were born and raised in the State of Israel. We will defend it,” he said, as Cohen nodded and agreed.
Otzma Yehudit MK Almog Cohen confronts a man in the southern city of Sadrot on May 3, 2023. (Channel 12 screenshot: used in accordance with section 27A of the Copyright Act)
Responding to the report, Cohen said he did not know the man, but after speaking with him beforehand, he believed it was “right for him to interrupt the broadcast to give voice to the cries of Southern residents.” Was.”
In another incident, this time on Wednesday, Cohen engaged in a shouting match on live television with a Sredot resident in the middle of an interview with Channel 12, later attacking him over the bombing as well. The encounter didn’t seem scripted, and Cohen looked visibly upset by it.
During the broadcast, Cohen criticized his own government’s policies on the Gaza attacks, in which he and His party vision is weak.
At one point a young man stepped between Cohen and the camera, handed the far-right MP a bag of pita bread and asked: “How do these pita bread help me?”
He was referring to National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir’s decision in January to end pita-baking in prisons holding Palestinian prisoners, saying he wanted to deny imprisoned terrorists perks including freshly baked pitas. The minister has been widely derided for what many view as a populist, social media-ready move. Opposition leader Yair Lapid has jokingly referred to him as the “father and minister of TikTok”.
“How does this pita help me? We need security. Where is my security?” he argued.
Cohen tried to calm the man down, asking him to “look at me”, to which the man replied: “Why should I look at you, what will it help me? What have you given me so far?” “
A man hands a bag of pita bread to Otzma Yehudit MK in the southern city of Sadrot on May 3, 2023. (Channel 12 screenshot: used in accordance with section 27A of the Copyright Act)
“I want to ask you, do you understand that you and the leader of your party perpetrated this attack on us,” the man shouted, apparently referring to allegations that Ben Gvir and other hardline members of the government sided with the Palestinians. Tension has increased time and again, due to which violence has increased.
“Who did you vote for?” Cohen asked.
“Why is this relevant? I was born and raised here in Sredot, I fought in Operation Protective Edge,” the man shouted, referring to the 2014 conflict between Israel and Hamas in the Gaza Strip.
The argument intensified and the people around got entangled and tried to separate the two.
Cohen accused the man of “provocation”. Pointing to a child, Cohen shouted: “That kid over there doesn’t interest you. The only thing that interests you is that the government will fall.
“I fought for that kid!” The man yelled at Cohen, to which the lawmaker shouted back: “I fought too. I fought more than you! You can check it out!”
The man began to walk away, at which point Cohen shouted at him: “Get these provocateurs out of here! Don’t dance on our blood! Veins!” This prompted the man to turn back and shout that it was Cohen who was “dancing on our blood” and to tell him to get out of town. “This is my city!”
“Provocateur, provocateur!” Cohen shouted back.
The fight then ended before a clearly agitated Cohen continued the interview.
According to the Israel Defense Forces, Palestinian militants launched 104 projectiles from Gaza during Tuesday and Wednesday morning flare-ups, including one that hit a construction site in Shredot, where three people were injured. One minor and two mild.
Responding to rocket attacks from Gaza, the IDF attacked 16 targets belonging to Islamic Jihad and Hamas terror groups overnight, in what was labeled as a “weak” response by Otzma Yehudit.
The party announced that it would skip the vote in the Knesset for the whole day, and instead, Ben Gvir and its members marched in the southern city of Sordot.
After the confrontation, Cohen made a statement claiming that the man was an activist of the Black Flag anti-government protest group, although it was unclear on what basis he was making that claim.
“I am saddened that Black Flag activists are using the tragedy we experienced in the South as a platform for incitement. This struggle is non-partisan and not associated with the left or the right,” he said.
Rockets fired by Palestinian terrorists towards Israel in Gaza City on May 3, 2023. (AP Photo/Fatima Shabair)
ruling Likud party on Wednesday Slammed Ben Gvir for his party’s decision to boycott the Knesset votes, telling them he could leave if he didn’t like the way Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ran the government.
Hitting back, Ben Gvir said Otzma Yehudit would continue to abstain from voting with the coalition unless Netanyahu pursued more hardline policies, and security consultations on Tuesday’s fighting between Israel and Gaza-based militant groups Angered at his exclusion from the
The dust-up was the latest in a series of cracks emerging in Netanyahu’s hard-right-religious government, which faces mounting internal pressure over a skyrocketing cost of living, rising violent crime as well as its currently shelved plans to overhaul the judiciary. Have done and a deepening conflict with the Palestinians.
Otzma Yehudit’s ouster comes as Ben Gvir faced a sharp spike in escalating terrorist attacks and killings in December after running on a platform of keeping civilians safe.
Israel and Gaza’s militant groups agreed to a ceasefire, hours before Otzma Yehudit’s announcement, Al Jazeera and Reuters reported, after a day-long flare-up in violence during a hunger strike by prominent Palestinian Islamic Jihad member Khader Adnan . Israeli prison.