BEERSHEBA (Dispatches) -- Tensions ran high as ceremonies commemorating slain Zionist soldiers turned into protests on Tuesday, far from the decades-old tradition of Memorial Day unity.
Despite calls from hardline prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu and opposition leaders to put disagreements aside, the friction was palpable as bereaved families laid wreaths and lit candles at graves across the occupied territories.
Bereaved father Asaf Halamish was angry at politicians who had not served in the military giving speeches at memorial ceremonies.
His son, Zohar, was an artillery officer and passionate filmmaker. When his platoon came under fire in Lebanon in 1993, the 21-year-old left his camera rolling, leaving his father with a record of the last moments of his life.
“(This Israel) is not my country, not the one I was born in, not the one I was raised in, not the one I fought for and not the one my son died for,” Halamish told Reuters.
Israel has been swept by weeks of protests across the occupied territories, primarily in response to a plan by Netanyahu’s extremist coalition to overhaul the judiciary.
In Beersheba, where far-right minister Itamar Ben-Gvir spoke, a brief scuffle broke out after a man exchanged insults with a veteran Zionist journalist perceived to be left-leaning.
“Show some respect,” one man shouted at Ben-Gvir as the minister approached the podium. “Calm down,” another man replied.
“It’s a disgrace that the left is sending here, to cemeteries, its representatives in order to stir trouble while Ben-Gvir is here to pay us respect,” said Rafi Hazan, 43.
Referring to the central location of mass protests in Tel Aviv, he said: “Anyone who is here to protest should go back to Kaplan.”
At other cemeteries, shortly before settlers stood for two minutes’ silence, angry families disrupted visiting coalition members, shouting “Shame!” and singing in protest against the regime’s policies.
Protests are expected to continue on Wednesday, when Zionists mark 75 years since the entity’s founding.
Speaking at the Mount Herzl ceremony in occupied Al-Quds, the Zionist regime’s president Isaac Herzog echoed appeals for unity.
The occupying regime marks its 75th anniversary this week in a fractious and uncertain mood, overshadowed by a battle over
the judiciary that has opened up some of the deepest social divisions since its foundation in 1948.
“I am convinced that there is no greater existential threat to our people than the one that comes from within: Our own polarization and alienation from one another,” Herzog told the General Assembly of the Jewish Federations of North America in Tel Aviv this week.
Hundreds of thousands of settlers have taken to the streets weekly since the start of the year to protest plans by Netanyahu to push through curbs on the judiciary.
The regime and its supporters say the changes are needed to rein in activist judges but agreed last month to pause the plans to allow for more consultation.
But the protests have continued and for many settlers, the standoff has opened up profound questions about the entity that go beyond the makeup of the supreme court and the power of the executive to override its decisions.
Uzy Zwebner, an entrepreneur from Tel Aviv who creates high tech business parks, calls himself a patriot from a Zionist family that came to what is now Israel in the 19th century.
A veteran of the 1973 Yom Kippur war who was wounded in action a day after one of his brothers was killed fighting the Egyptians in the Sinai, he represents a section of society that has been deeply alienated by the new regime.
“What kind of country are we going to be?” he said. “(One where) everyone serves in the army? Or are we going to be like other countries around us?”
Behind his anxiety lies a fear of a sharp deepening of divisions which have always existed in Occupied Palestine between European Ashkenazis and Middle Eastern Mizrahi, between religious Al-Quds and laid back Tel Aviv and between right-wing settlers and urban liberals.
Arabs, who make up a fifth of the population, have largely stayed out of the debate, which many Palestinians say ignores their concerns and the decades-long occupation of areas they want as the core of a future state.
But the growing power of the religious parties that helped Netanyahu to power last year has alarmed many Zionists, who often resent the special conditions and subsidies that enable many Orthodox men to avoid military service and study in Torah schools rather than take paid employment.
According to a survey by Channel 12 News last week, around 51% of Israelis are pessimistic about the future of the entity.
“There’s a lot of fear in the air that gives way to hatred sometimes,” said Elisheva Blum, a resident of Eli, a settlement in the occupied West Bank. Born in the United States, she came with her religious family to Occupied Palestine in 1988.
But she said she was alienated by signs from the protesters who have filled central Tel Aviv every week.
“It bothers me because one has nothing to do with the other, that’s how I see it,” she said.