Cancelling Flag March 'shameful surrender to Hamas', says Israel politician

Supporters of Israeli “change coalition” carry placards and wave the national flag during a demonstration in support of the coalition to form a government, in the Israeli city of Tel Aviv, on June 3, 2021 [JACK GUEZ/AFP via Getty Images]

Israeli police’s decision to cancel the Flag March, due to be held on Thursday in Jerusalem, over security concerns is a “shameful surrender to terror and Hamas threats,” a right-wing Knesset member said yesterday.

Head of the Religious Zionism party, Bezalel Smotrich, slammed the police commissioner for “expressing inability to protect the Israeli demonstrators in the streets of Jerusalem.”

“He is now letting Yahya Sinwar run Jerusalem,” he added, in reference to the head of Hamas in Gaza.

“The people of Israel are alive and deserve a different, stronger, and more determined leadership,” Smotrich stressed.

Known as the Flag March, the rally sees far-right Israeli ultra-nationalists flooding through Muslim areas celebrating the capture of East Jerusalem by Zionist occupation forces following a second wave of ethnic cleansing in 1967. Chanting “death to Arabs” and singing racist and highly offensive songs, thousands are seen parading through Muslim areas flying the Israeli flag.

READ: Fatah calls for public to mobilise against Israeli ‘flag march’ in Jerusalem

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