As protests against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his government ramped up in recent days, police began deploying officers from a newly formed National Guard, who have been accused of using excessive force to quell the demonstrations.

Members of the force — a controversy-laden brainchild of National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir — were filmed in recent days punching, kicking, and hurling protesters to the ground at protests in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv.

On Sunday, as hundreds of demonstrators railed against the cabinet’s no-confidence vote against Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara outside Netanyahu’s private residence in Jerusalem, around a dozen National Guard officers pushed their way to the front of the masses to man crowd control barricades, alongside police already stationed there.

Clashes broke out soon after, with security forces arresting three demonstrators, according to police. At the scene, officers were seen forcefully shoving protesters to the asphalt.

The establishment of a civil defense force — ostensibly to secure the country against internal threats — had long been one of the top demands of Ben Gvir, who returned to his post on Wednesday, after quitting the government in January in protest of the ceasefire in Gaza.

The notion of a National Guard first surfaced during former prime minister Naftali Bennett’s government, spurred by the police’s bungled response to inter-communal riots that broke out in mixed cities in May 2021, during a previous war with Gaza.

The reliance on Border Police officers dispatched to suppress the violence that erupted between Jewish and Arab residents put the latter force under strain, prompting calls to bulk up its personnel with an auxiliary force. But the government’s nascent plans came apart with the collapse of the Bennett-Lapid coalition in 2022.

Upon becoming national........

© The Times of Israel