Starting in the early afternoon on Thursday, thousands of Jewish Israelis poured through Jerusalem’s Damascus Gate and began their yearly rampage through the Muslim Quarter of the Old City, celebrating Israel’s seizure of East Jerusalem in 1967.

The crowd — made up largely of religious Zionist youth — roamed around looking for people to harass and attack. Because relatively few Palestinians were present by the time the march began, they turned much of their attention to journalists and Israeli left-wing activists: interfering with filming, spitting, shoving, snatching phones, and chanting slogans including “may your village burn,” “Muhammad is dead,” “a Jew has a soul, an Arab is a son of a bitch,” and “death to Arabs.”

“This day is a very special day to me: it’s the day the Jews got control of the Western Wall,” Nathan, an American Jew from Brooklyn who preferred not to give his last name, told +972. “It’s very sad to me that after the [1967] war Arabs were allowed back — that was a big mistake, and I hope they won’t make those mistakes in Gaza and in Lebanon.”

Since its first iteration in 1968 — when followers of ultranationalist Rabbi Zvi Yehuda Kook took to the streets to dance and sing their way toward the Western Wall in celebration of Israel’s annexation of East Jerusalem — the Flag March has become a mainstream event sponsored and promoted by the Jerusalem Municipality. Over the past 15 years in particular, there has been a distinct spike in far-right agitation surrounding the march, with far right-wing Jewish groups systematically harassing Palestinian shopkeepers and residents in the Muslim Quarter.

“Tomorrow there will be chaos,” Abu Anab, a Palestinian who owns a small stand selling toys just inside Damascus Gate, told +972 on Wednesday, a day ahead of the march. “We’re closing to prevent problems. There will be many people provoking us.”

Many stores had planned to close at 3 p.m., around the time police generally shut down the Muslim Quarter. Yet by 11 a.m. on Thursday, soldiers were already telling shop owners to close down. The few who had not yet shuttered hurriedly packed up their belongings.

Bracing for violence

Before the march began, left-wing Israeli activists had gathered around Damascus Gate. Around 10 a.m., some 100 people from the anti-racism group Tag Meir distributed flowers to Palestinians in an already mostly empty Old City. “This is a way for us to affirm humanity,” Jack Chomsky, a Tag Meir volunteer in his 70s, told +972. “I admire our Arab neighbors so much for sticking it out.”

Police began limiting entry to the Old City shortly after 9:30 a.m. Still, both Israeli and Palestinian activists from Standing Together, wearing purple vests reading “humanitarian guard,” managed to enter, as did plainclothes activists from groups including Looking the Occupation in the Eye, Rabbis for Human Rights, and the Faithful Left. Members of the anti-occupation group Free Jerusalem marched in the opposite direction of the right-wing crowds, holding signs against the “ongoing Nakba” and flags with the colors of the Palestinian flag, before police dispersed them and arrested one activist.

For weeks, these groups had recruited hundreds of volunteers, ranging from teenagers to the elderly, in anticipation of the violence. “What’s supposed to happen here soon is a desecration,” Yonatan Rothschild, a Haredi volunteer offering protective presence throughout the day, told +972 ahead of the march. “I came to preempt the violence in solidarity with my Palestinian neighbors.”

Rula Daood, Standing Together’s national co-director, described the activists’ role in similar terms. “We didn’t come to protest, but to de-escalate,” she said. “If we see violence, we try to stand between the right-wing activists and Palestinians. Unfortunately, this shouldn’t have to be the work of civilians and activists.” 

Standing Together had already planned a follow up action for Saturday, in which volunteers would comb through the Old City tearing down the right-wing stickers plastered during the march. This year, many featured a photo of National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir and his noose-shaped lapel — an allusion to the recently-passed death penalty bill — beneath the words “Death to terrorists.”

Indeed, the police presence tasked with “securing” the march operates under the authority of Ben Gvir, himself a seasoned participant in the festivities. Midway through the day, he was seen waving an Israeli flag at Al-Aqsa, where the long-held status quo has been steadily eroded in recent years by growing settler incursions and open displays of Israeli sovereignty. “The Temple Mount is in our hands,” he proclaimed, echoing Israeli commander Mordechai Gur’s famous radio message after the 1967 war.

In the end, shop owners reported that this year’s march was quieter than in previous years, largely because Palestinians rushed to clear out of the Old City well before the right-wing youth groups arrived. In some cases, police separated right-wing activists from journalists and left-wing activists; in others, they pushed journalists and activists out of the Old City altogether. 

In recent iterations of the march, police have organized a “press area” at Damascus Gate from which journalists could broadcast. This year, some officers on the ground claimed journalists were required to remain inside the designated area, while Jewish civilians were allowed to move freely. “No filming,” “I’m a minor,” and “You’re traitors” were among the chants directed at journalists. The police, for their part, did little to protect them.

The new ‘moderates’

Yet as violent and racist as the Flag March was, this year it paled in comparison to the reality unfolding in the West Bank, Gaza, and Lebanon. There, Israelis do not merely chant “may your village burn” — they burn villages. They do not just spray-paint “death to Arabs” in public spaces — they kill them.

Only hours after the march, settlers attacked the village of Jibiya near Ramallah, torching a mosque and several cars and leaving behind graffiti that read “For the liberation of Jerusalem.”

Even the protective presence activists who came in larger numbers this year have faced far more severe violence in the West Bank than they did in Jerusalem: beatings with clubs, pepper spray, and stone-throwing there, compared with spitting and shoving in the Old City.

Ahead of the march, cardboard signs reading “Jewish owned, do not torch” were taped across several ATM machines in the Muslim Quarter. A Jewish man was seen making and attaching the signs in the late morning. 

“This doesn’t represent everyone,” claimed Ariel, a young man from Modi’in who had come to participate in the Flag March, pointing toward groups of youths attacking journalists and activists. He described himself as “moderate,” but his phone bore a sticker reading: “Repentance + War + Expulsion + Settlement = Victory.”

Despite such claims of “moderation,” it was hard to find a group of marchers who were not singing racist songs, plastering stickers on Palestinian businesses, or blocking photographers from documenting the events. Activists from the right-wing NGO Im Tirtzu arrived with banners reading “This is not Al-Aqsa, it’s the Temple Mount” and “You wanted a massacre, you’ll get a Nakba.”

This is the face of the new Israeli “moderate”: conquer, kill, and expel the Arabs, just don’t curse and openly wish death upon them.