Thousands of Israeli settlers have joined the so-called “Flag March” through the Muslim Quarter of Jerusalem’s Old City, where large groups chanted racist slogans including “death to the Arabs,” and “may their villages burn,” as they celebrated the occupation of Jerusalem.
https://x.com/qudsnen/status/2054946559981162903?s=46&t=t_-JFgpXqgMIkVsuBfWELw
Before the official “Flag March” began today, a mob of Israeli teenagers harassed and taunted Palestinian Jerusalemites, as well as journalists and activists, spitting, shouting racist slogans, and throwing chairs and coffee at passersby as they walked through the Old City.
https://x.com/LindaDayan9/status/2054893149105913987
An Israeli police officer in Jerusalem's Old City pushed Haaretz journalist Linda Dayan while wearing a press card after refusing her request to accompany her out of the area. Teenagers and youth, seemingly as young as 10 years old, threw water and coffee at her, and stole the phone of another journalist in the area. The mob also shouted homophobic slurs at the journalists.
https://x.com/haaretznewsvid/status/2054882732916797819?s=46&t=t_-JFgpXqgMIkVsuBfWELw
https://x.com/ihabhassane/status/2054937431795781641?s=46&t=t_-JFgpXqgMIkVsuBfWELw
The annual march, paid for and promoted by the Israeli occupation government, celebrates Israel’s capture and occupation of East Jerusalem and its holy sites in the war of 1967.
https://x.com/qudsnen/status/2054938420628086829?s=46&t=t_-JFgpXqgMIkVsuBfWELw
The festival begins at sunset on Thursday, 14 May and ends at nightfall on 15 May.
https://x.com/qudsnen/status/2054928595101921408?s=46&t=t_-JFgpXqgMIkVsuBfWELw
According to the website of the Knesset, Israel's parliament, Jerusalem Day (or Yom Yerushalayim in Hebrew) has been celebrated since 1968, when lawmakers decided to commemorate the occupation of the Palestinian neighbourhoods in the city.
Jerusalem Day was enshrined as a national holiday by the Knesset in 1998, when Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu signed it into law during his first tenure.
It is being held the day before Palestinians commemorate the Nakba, or the Catastrophe, when about 13,000 Palestinians were killed and 750,000 expelled and driven from their homes by Zionist and later Israeli militias in what is seen as the ethnic cleansing of Palestine that led to the creation of Israel.
The focus of the day is the “Flag March”, during which tens of thousands of ultra-nationalist Israelis and settlers march through the city waving Israeli flags.
The parade has long been notorious for its open displays of Jewish supremacy.
Every year, tens of thousands of mostly young Israeli settlers rampage through the Old City, harass and attack Palestinian residents, and shout racist slogans, all while backed by police.
Popular chants included “May your village burn,” “Shuafat is on fire,” “Muhammad is dead,” and the genocidal "revenge" song which includes a biblical injunction turned on the Palestinians: “May their name be erased.”
National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich always participate in the march.
“I returned here to send a message to every house in Gaza and [Lebanon]: Jerusalem is ours. Damascus Gate is ours. The Temple Mount is ours,” Ben-Gvir said in 2024.
Alongside the chants, some settlers carried flags of the Jewish supremacist group Lehava, as well as signs reading “A bullet to the head of every terrorist” and “Kahane was right.”
In 2024, settlers made public reference to the Israeli assault on Gaza, calling to “flatten Rafah” and carrying the flag of Gush Katif, the Israeli settlement that was evacuated as part of the 2005 disengagement, and which many on the Israeli right hope to occupy again.
During the march, settlers and police also aggressively attack journalists and activists who document the march.
One large group arriving at the Damascus Gate in 2025 chanted “Gaza is ours”, and carried a large banner reading “Jerusalem 1967, Gaza 2025”. Another banner read “without a Nakba there is no victory”.
Despite the history of violence at the march, police did little to protect many of the Palestinians targeted with violence.
