Right-wing mob breaches Israeli military base

Israeli soldiers and police clash with right wing protesters, after they broke into the Bayt Lid army base

A group of far-right activists broke into the facility that's being used to detain Palestinian terror suspects

(Image credit: Oren Ziv / AFP via Getty Images)

published 30 July 2024

What happened

Dozens of far-right protesters, flanked by conservative members of the Israeli Knesset, breached the perimeter of Israel's Sde Teiman detention center on Monday. Military police worked to detain army reservists over allegations of sexual abuse against Palestinian prisoners kept on the base.

Monday's riot at a base that has "become a symbol of the war" between Israel and Hamas militants in Gaza was "disastrous," The Jerusalem Post said. Some reservists serving at the base attempted to disrupt the raid on their comrades in a "rare instance of Israeli soldiers confronting their own," The New York Times said. Israel faces an "existential threat if these people do not get out of the government and of our lives," opposition leader Yair Lapid said, citing the "dangerous criminality" of the right-wing lawmakers who participated in the riot, reported CNN.

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Rafi Schwartz has worked as a politics writer at The Week since 2022, where he covers elections, Congress and the White House. He was previously a contributing writer with Mic focusing largely on politics, a senior writer with Splinter News, a staff writer for Fusion's news lab, and the managing editor of Heeb Magazine, a Jewish life and culture publication. Rafi's work has appeared in Rolling Stone, GOOD and The Forward, among others.