Police maintained a deliberately intimidating presence at a rally by former MK Michael Ben Ari in southern Tel Aviv last week. Policemen stood feet away from Ben Ari and pointed cameras at the protestors. Ben Ari accused the police and the state of Israel of failing to deal effectively with the threat posed by infiltrators, who have made life in the southern neighborhoods very difficult and dangerous for the locals. He said that a police officer tried to dissuade him from holding the rally by lying and saying that residents asked him to keep away. “The Netanyahu government has established, in its previous four years, a state within a state here,” he accused. “We have Sudan City inside Tel Aviv. “We came here to say that the state of Israel is the country of the Jews; it does not belong to the citizens of the entire world. We are here to tell the prime minister: the time is over for committees, for debates, for court sessions. It is time to enforce the law. "Outlaws needs to go to jail. How can they send all the lawbreakers here and wonder why residents of southern Tel Aviv have lost their confidence? Children can't go to their playgrounds. The Israel Police is very good at persecuting us... But if someone, a woman, tries to walk down these streets in the evening. She can't." "They'll rape us,” responded neighborhood residents. Video by Ofer Golan
