The Chairman of the Constitution Committee, MK Simcha Rotman, responded to the incident that happened during Shabbat, where violent demonstrators attacked him and his wife while they were marching in the city and called him harsh names. At one point, Rothman grabbed the megaphone of one of the demonstrators and returned it to her after a few minutes.
In a response published today, Rothman published his version of the incident: “A small group of violent protesters attacked me and my wife when we were walking late at night in New York. They blocked our way, stepped on my wife Hannah’s foot and cursed, including death wishes.
The security guards called the police, we described to them where we were, and we continued walking, ignoring the protesters.
There has never been one like this.
Documentation from New York: MK Simcha Rothman forcibly abducts a protester with a cellphone pic.twitter.com/2xZT9SJShA— Josh Breiner (@JoshBreiner) June 3, 2023
At some point the protesters realized that we were not excited about them, then they put a megaphone to our ear (an attack on anything) and shouted. Both me and the security guards repeatedly told them to stop and stay away and they continued. After all the warnings, I took the megaphone from the demonstrator that she pushed into my ear without touching it of course. After about half a block we reached a place where we could enter and wait for the police. The police escorted me to the hotel, and the incident was over.”
“On the margins of things,” writes Rothman, “but not at all on the margins of their importance. The fact that Yair Lapid and Benny Gantz do not condemn the violent attacks on members of the Knesset, and even encourage them, indicates more than anything else that they have become opposition to the state.”
