Violence broke out in the Knesset on Monday evening as guards used force to physically prevent bereaved families and relatives of hostages from entering the plenum’s visitors’ gallery to watch a debate on probing the October 7 catastrophe, including a speech by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

When 40 members of the October Council — which represents some 1,500 October 7 survivors, former hostages, and victims’ families — tried to ascend a stairwell leading to the gallery, they were pushed, hit and grabbed in what quickly devolved into a chaotic scrum.

Video of the incident shared by the group showed one guard wrestling a man to the floor and pulling him aside — with his forearm across the man’s throat. Three people subsequently required medical treatment, according to Hebrew media reports.

During the fracas, one member of the group called out to the guards that they were “hitting bereaved parents.”

Several of the relatives were seen crying and comforting each other after the violence and before they were finally allowed into the gallery, with some reciting the Kaddish prayer for the dead.

The father of Yarden Buskila, who was murdered on October 7 at the Nova festival, fainted during the clash and required medical attention, Channel 12 reported. In a video shared online, Shimon Buskila said he was “broken” by the incident.

“Is this how bereaved families are treated? With us on the floor? Is that our place?” he asked.

Speaking with Channel 12 on Tuesday morning, Yaira Gutman, whose daughter Tamar was murdered at the Nova Festival, said that after being blocked by the guards, the families “tried to talk to them, explaining that we had permission.”

“We did not succeed. And then the rest of the parents arrived. And one of the parents called out, ‘Come, let’s go in.’ And yes, we pushed. And when we pushed the Knesset guards, we started to receive physical blows,” she said.

“They didn’t stand in a line to block us. They hit us. They dragged us to the floor. Some of us fell, some of us were dragged. A parent was beaten by one of the guards. Other parents got involved to try to extricate him. There was a huge fracas.”

Comparing the guards to a “street mob,” Gutman asserted that they had “clearly been instructed not to let us enter, and not to be nice to us” despite the fact that “we had been invited.”

The families were in the Knesset to attend a so-called 40 signatures debate — a plenum discussion that the opposition can call once a month and that the prime minister is legally obliged to attend — on establishing a state commission of inquiry into the failure to prevent the October 7, 2023, invasion and massacre by Hamas in southern Israel and the events surrounding it.

Ahead of the debate, the families held a press conference in the Knesset demanding a state probe. Recalling the screams of those who were murdered and raped, Nova survivor Tali Biner told reporters that she no longer sleeps at night and demanded that Netanyahu establish a state commission of inquiry “to investigate what happened to us that day.”

“Without understanding the failures, we cannot correct them, and the next disaster is already at hand,”........

© The Times of Israel