Protestors in clown makeup march in Tel Aviv Saturday

Protesters march in Tel Aviv to mark 42 years of occupation

By Ofri Ilani

Tags: Israeli Occupation


Protesters held a rally in Tel Aviv Saturday to mark 42 years since the beginning of the Israeli occupation of the West Bank.

Around 1,000 demonstrators marched in the rally, which led from Rabin Square to the Tel Aviv museum.

MK Nitzan Horovitz (Meretz) addressed the crowd, calling on Israel to stop settlement building and heed calls by U.S. President Barack Obama to restart the peace process.
"The negative reactions to Obama's initiatives are only coming from Al Qaida and [Israeli right-wing party] the National Union," Horovitz told the crowd, adding "this is the time to end the occupation."

Head of the far left Hadash party Mohammed Barakeh also addressed the demonstration.


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I was running yesterday (finally) and I decided to not run on the tiyalet near the beach and to explore a little more. As I'm about 10 minutes into my run I find this protest that is written about in the above article. From what I could understand from the Hebrew I could tel it had something to do with Palestinians but it was a little unclear to me. It was by far one of the stranger things I have seen in awhile. Of course my curiosity made me stop and get as close to the drumming protesters as possible. I squeezed through the crowd and around the camera guy and peered in through a couple of strangely dressed Israelis and the many clowns standing around me. My first thought was why the hell are there clowns here. I thought to myself that maybe it was some sort of entertainment for a good minute but the chantting and drumming squandered that thought. As i stood there I was sweating up a storm because Tel Aviv has become absurdly hot these days, but still I stood and became the curious bystander. About 5 minutes in the police started coming in and later I noticed there was a row of army guys standing there too. As the Police tried to break up the circle of drummers and chanters a couple guys start yelling in English "Fuck the Police." Beyond this experience being quite thrilling i decided this was my cue to keep on running. I stood and observed for a few more minutes trying to figure out what i was observing and kept running. About two seconds a way was a whole crowd of people , young and old, Israelis, Jewish and non Jewish it appeared holding up the colors that represent Palestine. A guy was yelling something through a microphone coming out of his beat up truck.

I always have wanted to be part of a protest but i guess a observer is close enough at the moment. Although until this morning I had no idea what i was observing or that the the buildings I was standing near were government,army buildings. The question I pose though is , How exactly being dressed as clowns fit into this whole picture and have to do with the occupation?