Israel's spiraling out of control with inner turmoil.
Violent protests erupting of Israelis on their own government.
The unprecedented demonstrations reaching a breaking point.
The rare uprising blocking roads and disrupting trains,
clashing with police who fired stun grenades and water cannons.
>> As many as 200,000 protesters gathered in Jerusalem and
Tel Aviv over the weekend to protest Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's
proposal which would weaken the judicial branch in Israel,
in particular, the Supreme Court in Israel.
Now, at issue is Netanyahu's plan to allow the Knesset
to overrule the Supreme Court with a simple majority.
Now this would of course prevent the Supreme Court from being able to strike
down laws ,or at least some laws, that they have deemed unconstitutional.
Now, the protests have been taking place ever since he made this proposal.
But this past weekend, the crowds just really exploded.
And if you take a look at this photo that was tweeted out,
you can see just how large the crowd is.
According to the poster, an incredible photo downtown Tel Aviv is flooded
with Israelis protesting the government's judicial reform package, and
you also have some of the protesters, of course, speaking to the press,
one of whom was a high school teacher who says this,
there's a great danger that Israel will turn into a dictatorship.
We came here to demonstrate over and over again until we win.
Now, while the protest started off as peaceful,
things unfortunately did turn violent at certain points.
Take a look at the video.
>> Protesters here, they're chanting democracy right now,
are warning that if this law goes through,
it is a potentially fatal blow to Israel's democracy.
They say it would center a dangerous amount of power in the hands of para
Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who Alex, of course,
is on trial as we speak for criminal corruption charges.
Many of the protestors here believe that ultimately, this law is about Netanyahu
trying to get out from underneath these criminal charges that he's facing.
Now, the Prime Minister ,of course, strongly denies that.
He says these laws are necessary reforms to curb what he says are activist
judges standing in the way of Israel's democratically elected government.
>> Okay.
So, I love these protests in Israel.
Go Israeli citizens, please protect your democracy and
then we can get on to other matters as well.
But unfortunately,
this type of creeping authoritarianism is happening all across the world.
Now look, it got turned back in some places like in Brazil, Lula's back,
Bolsonaro's out, let's hope that we can keep that going.
Here, the corporate rule is back instead of Trump.
It's better than Trump, but not very good.
But whichever authoritarianism we have, and corporate rule here in America is
some version of authoritarianism, it just keeps that slope, keeps on sliding.
And it always ends with a completely authoritarian government.
Cuz the more the power that they take, the more they get corrupted, and
the more power they have to take and at the end,
they can't let anybody else weigh in, otherwise they'll get caught.
It's true of Erdogan in Turkey, it's true of Putin in Russia,
it's true of Netanyahu in Israel, and this is now the Israeli citizens rising up and
saying, no, we don't want you to be above the law.
But, now let's also be clear, there are a lot of Israeli citizens and
US citizens and those other countries that I mentioned,
that do want their right-wing leader to be above the law.
And they want them to be able to break the law and protect their faction.
And in Israel, there's two different, their factions, right?
There's the right-wing faction, and the religious fundamentalists, it's settled,
that's one group that's within Israel, and ,of course,
the other faction is just Israel versus the Palestinians.
And basically so far, the Israeli citizens have said many times,
no, we like Netanyahu's version of brutality.
But now when it's turned against their own citizens, they like it a little less.
>> Yeah.
And just to comment on what you refer to in regard to other countries that
also have a faction of voters or citizens who want to protect their leader.
I mean, we certainly have that here in the United States, right?
It didn't matter what Trump would be accused of, it didn't matter what kind of
evidence was presented to show that he was in fact guilty of what he has been accused
of, his supporters stood by his side no matter what.
And for anyone who has that kind of ideology, I would just ask you to think
about the consequences, or what you would feel if the shoe were on the other foot?
Or if the politicians you do not prefer,
took advantage of that type of authoritarianism, essentially.
Right? >> Yeah, they would despise him.
They would think that it was the worst thing that ever happened to humanity
except, look, I hate to say it, but in my experience,
right-wing voters all across the world do not care about hypocrisy at all.
0%.
If you said to them, show on the other foot, they'd be like, well,
it isn't another foot.
In fact, I took it off and I beat you with it, and I love that I beat you with it.
So, I don't think religious fundamentalist voters in Israel, which is a huge part
of the problem, or in America, or in Russia or in Turkey, are gonna all of
a sudden turn around, My God, you're right, how about my fellow man?
Right?
No, they're gonna go, fundamentalism, beat them before they beat us.
>> The other thing that I'd mention is that while these protests are huge,
Netanyahu did win the election with a landslide.
So there's a huge portion of the electorate in Israel that favors him.
Now, I don't know if any of them have changed their mind about Netanyahu after
he proposed to weaken the Supreme Court in Israel?
But I do wanna give you some more details about what happened over the weekend.
So I had earlier mentioned that it was mostly peaceful but
in certain moments, things did get a little violent.
Footage released by police later showed protesters breaking down barriers in
Tel Aviv, and igniting fires as they blocked roads,
police sprayed water cannons at the protesters.
Some protesters found out where Netanyahu's wife was,
apparently she was getting her hair done, and they decided to target her.
So we have a little bit of video on that as well.
Let's take a look.
>> Crowds even gathered outside an upscale hair salon where Netanyahu's wife,
Sarah, was getting her hair done.
Some chanting in Hebrew, quote, the country is burning and
Sarah is getting a haircut.
Israeli media said police were called to her aid, and
she was removed from the scene unharmed.
Her husband later tweeting, the anarchy must stop, it can cost lives.
And the protests even extended to outside their home in Jerusalem.
That demonstrator alluding to a Palestinian village in the occupied
West Bank, where violence is the worst in 20 years according to
the Palestinian Health Ministry.
>> So, I wanted to just quickly make a reference to Huwara,
which was mentioned in that video.
Because Netanyahu in regard to what happened to his wife compared what
happened to his wife to the village of Huwara which was burnt,
fires were set there by vigilantes, Israeli vigilantes.
I'll get to more details about that in just a moment.
But he actually received a lot of backlash for making that comparison and
he walked it back afterward, but I think that's important context to bring up.
>> So look, what happened with his wife is, if I'm being honest,
it's like nearly perfect.
Why?
Because she was not hurt, she was not in danger of getting hurt, I hope she wasn't,
then that would make it very imperfect.
What they did was they gathered outside and they yelled shame, shame,
to someone who benefited from Netanyahu's corruption, and
who was part of the team that doesn't want to fix the corruption.
That's exactly what you should do.
You should voice your dissent with the government and yell, shame.
If they had hurt her, I would be saying the exact opposite.
I say that would be terrible and that would be the worst,
it would be counterproductive.
Don't ever harm anyone physically.
But so you want your wife and yourself to be immune
from criticism even though you guys are charged with corruption.
So, no deal.
I think that the protesters handled it nearly perfectly.
And so in terms of Huwara, yeah, it's an epic disaster.
And now you've got one of the top ministers in this awful hideous Netanyahu
government, he halfway, quarter of the way,
walked it back but saying you should exterminate the village of Huwara.
>> Well, he didn't really walk it back.
So I wanna get into those details right now actually.
So, Palestinian rights activists have noted that the right side
slide is a direct and predictable continuation of a system that
denies its Palestinian citizens full rights under the law, and
what happened in Huwara was just absolutely awful.
The person that Cenk was referring to, the government official that Cenk was
referring to is the Finance Minister of Israel.
And he said, quote, I think that Huwara needs to be wiped out.
But the state of Israel needs to do it, most certainly not private citizens.
That was his so called walk back, right?
He was upset that vigilantes did what they did, but
his initial statement didn't seem to incite violence.
So you can judge for yourselves.
Let's take a look at the next video.
>> An Israeli raid of a safe house left 11 Palestinians dead
last week with militants.
The Israeli defense forces said they were targeting among them along with some
civilians.
Then two Israelis were killed, leading to a mob of Jewish settlers
setting Palestinian homes and cars on fire leaving one dead.
That night, the settlers attacked us.
I saw them ,said this child, when they burned the car my mother went down with
a bucket of water to put out the fire.
Netanyahu calling for peace and saying people should not take the law into their
own hands, but also vowing to expand the settlements.
The newly appointed hardliner Finance Minister ,Bezalel Smotrich,
calling on the Israeli government to wipe out the village.
Saying in Hebrew, I think the village of Huwara needs to be erased.
I think the state of Israel should do it.
The US State Department condemning his comments
>> These comments were irresponsible,
they were repugnant, they were disgusting, >> And
look, while you can certainly condemn any type of violence that's committed,
including violence committed toward Israeli citizens by Palestinians,
this kind of vigilante justice and the incitements to violence,
encouraging people to carry out these acts of violence,
including burning people's homes down, is unacceptable.
I mean, unacceptable to the point that even the United States condemned it,
which is rare, honestly.
>> Very rare.
Of course, it's totally pointless.
They said they were calling him out, that doesn't mean a goddamn thing.
Do take away $1 from Israel's aid, and then I'll believe you that you care.
But there's no way you would do that, and
when you send the next shipment of aid to Israel and Netanyahu's government,
you're saying this much, go ahead and exterminate anyone you'll like, okay?
We're speaking with our dollars.
Okay?
Now with this BS calling out, wow, did you criticize?
All right guys, real quick on this stuff.
Number one, Smotrich is a monster.
And Yair Lapid and other Israelis leaders,
Lapid is the leader of the opposition, >> He's also right wing, by the way.
>> Yes, but at least he's not for exterminations.
I mean, this is the situation we're in.
Where he said that Jews should never be calling for exterminations.
Of course, of course, that's true.
It's unbelievable that Ignoramus is.
Monsters like Smotrich would call for stuff like that with no sense of history.
None, doesn't care, all he cares about is being savage towards others.
It's disgusting.
>> And by the way, I just wanna make sure that we cover all our bases and
give you all the details.
So let's go to graphic six here because,
what prompted this kind of reaction toward this village?
Well, apparently Smotrich was responding to a question asking why he had pressed
like on a tweet by Samaria Regional Council deputy head David Ben-Zion.
The tweet was written after an attack in which a Palestinian gunman fatally
shot two brothers as they drove on route 60 through the town of Huwara.
So that is what sparked this?
But as a political leader, as someone who's a member of this government,
it is your responsibility not to ratchet up more hatred and more violence, but
to find a way to yes, bring the gunman to justice, I'm not saying that you let him
go, right, that there's no justice, but you don't encourage more violence because
that doesn't make the situation safer for anyone including the Israeli population.
>> Well, Smotrich went on to clarify that for every act of terrorism,
Palestinian shops should be closed.
Wait, did the shopkeeper do it?
No, he doesn't care collective punishment.
Exactly what you should be against, and that is what other Jewish citizens of
Israel are saying, and saying we need to just arrest more Palestinians, take away
more of their rights, you think it's gonna lead to less terrorism or more terrorism?
So you're saying, do not target the terrorists,
just target Palestinians because you're deeply bigoted racist piece of crap.
>> Well, one of the criticisms that we've had is the disproportionate response
from the idea of the Israeli defense forces or the Israeli government, but
it's clear that that ideology is kind of baked into their system.
In fact, Smotrich, let's go to graphic nine here, Smotrich said he noted
that he supported harsh disproportionate responses by the IDF to terror attacks.
Quote, for each stone that is thrown, a Palestinian shop should be closed.
For every Molotov cocktail, there should be arrests and deportations, he said.
>> Again, of not of the people who did it but of random Palestinians.
Okay. So I have banned myself on the Gulf
countries, I'm not going to go to a country that led by
fundamentalist Muslims who might arrest me for being agnostic or atheist.
Right?
So, I'm not gonna risk my life and go to a country run by a dictator that
might take my life away for no goddamn reason other than his nonsense thoughts.
I now also have a ban on Israel.
So, I know no one cares, it's not like, Israel's shaking in their boots.
But I think first of all, if you're Muslim born in any way, shape or form,
you'd be nuts to go to Israel.
I mean, these guys are in charge now.
Do you think Smotrich and Netanyahu would hesitate for a second,
these deeply bigoted monsters would hesitate, go away.
No, but that's a different Muslim from a different country and say, no way, no way.
So, I'm not gonna take my life into my hands by going to a backwards country like
Israel, and I don't want to support a backwards country that says I'm going to
occupy these people for the rest of their lives coz they're savages.
And if they dare fight back, I will murder them and exterminate their villages.
I'm not going to a country like that, and
none of you should go to a country like that.
I love the citizens of Israel that are rising up.
I love Jewish-Americans in New York and
other places that also did protests that are rising up.
Those are my brothers and sisters and we fight together.
But not these authoritarian right wing leaders, not in Israel,
not in any country, always fight back against them.