Two arrested for allegedly shooting at anti-government protesters with airsoft gun

Suspects said to have fired from car as they circled Beersheba rally, hitting participants but causing no injuries; in Tel Aviv, protesters demand Oct. 7 state commission of inquiry

Police have arrested two men on suspicion of shooting toward anti-government protesters with an airsoft gun during a Saturday night demonstration in Beersheba. No injuries were reported. The detainees, both residents of the southern city in their 20s, were arrested at the scene after police searched their car and found the device.

Before the incident, demonstrators “spoke to the police two or three times, asking them to come and protect them from the taunts of passing Bibists,” according to the Protest Detainee Legal Support Front, which provides pro bono legal representation to anti-government protesters, using a term to refer to supporters of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

“A car went in circles around the protest and shot airsoft bullets at protesters, hitting elderly demonstrators,” the group said.

There have been a number of incidents of violence by government supporters against those attending rallies opposed to, or perceived to be opposed to, the government, including demonstrations in support of a hostage deal with Hamas.

Meanwhile, about 1,000 people attended a protest rally at Tel Aviv’s Habima Square against the government’s bid to legalize ultra-Orthodox exemption from military service and its refusal to form a state commission of inquiry into failures surrounding the Hamas-led onslaught of October 7, 2023.

The rally was organized by the Movement for Quality Government, which has petitioned the High Court to compel the government to draft ultra-Orthodox yeshiva students and form a state commission of inquiry.

Former minister Izhar Shay, whose son Yaron was killed fending off the terror onslaught at Kibbutz Kerem Shalom, told protesters that the “band of spineless suck-ups” in the government won’t be able to avoid an investigation for long.

“One day, when a state commission of inquiry is established,” he vowed, “the ministers of the government of debacle and disaster will have to give a detailed explanation, under oath,” of their purported failure to keep tabs on national security ahead of the invasion, said Shay.

He said he promised at his son’s funeral “that I would do everything… to uncover the truth.”

“I wasn’t looking for revenge, and I’m not looking for revenge today, either,” said Shay. “But I did look for justice.”

Netanyahu has rejected the establishment of a state commission of inquiry because its members would be selected by the judiciary, which he claims is biased against him.

Fellow former minister Orna Barbivai, who as the IDF’s first female general led the military’s Personnel Directorate, accused “the government of crooks” of putting ultra-Orthodox interests over those of Israelis who serve in the army.

“The duty to obey the law applies only to us, who work and pay taxes and serve in the IDF,” she said. “In the crook government’s virtual reality, the ongoing erosion of people who serve in the IDF is less important than… those who would rather die than be drafted,” she said.

The government is trying to advance a bill that would enshrine sweeping exemptions from military conscription for ultra-Orthodox yeshiva students after a decades-long battle over the practice of issuing blanket exemptions for the community.

Barbivai also accused Netanyahu of caving to US President Donald Trump’s declaration of a Lebanon ceasefire even as “residents of the north live under nonstop fire from Hezbollah.”

She further claimed the government was failing to support the IDF as it “is forced to deal with Jewish terrorism every day” in the West Bank.

The West Bank violence is “un-Jewish and inhumane” and is carried out by “organized, funded gangs that harm our legitimacy to act” against enemies, said Barbivai.

There has been a sharp spike in extremist settler violence in the West Bank, with deadly shootings, beatings, and assaults of Palestinians, arson, and other damage to property. Critics accuse the government, which relies on far-right parties to maintain a majority, of not doing enough to curb the violence.

There have been multiple instances of settler violence perpetrated either by active-duty reservists or with the apparent cooperation of soldiers in the field.