Protestor threatened by cop with rape of his mother recounts violent incident to 'Post'

In what looks like a tenebrism painting in motion, one short shot of the footage of the Saturday arrest of protester Itamar Alroey stands out.

Alroey is face down, locked in the embrace of another protester who is wearing a bright green Change Direction shirt and trying to protect Alroey, while all around the pair, uniformed police create the dark background that gives the scene its stark quality.

The footage of the arrest went viral after some of it showed a police officer cursing at Alroey and saying to him, “I am going to rape your mother.”

He remembers the moment of that shot from the footage – when he was face down in the other protester’s arms – in part because it is when police kicked his ribs, breaking one.

Although he had previously been involved in the protests against the judicial reform, Alroey considered not coming back to demonstrations after the outbreak of the Israel-Hamas war and his long reserve service. Alroey served for over five months in an infantry brigade in the North.

For “most of [my] reserve duty, I was like, okay, I am quitting activism,” he said.

In part this was because he thought that in the wake of the tragedy of October 7 and the war, things were going to be different.

“I expected that things would change in the political discourse and the political makeup. I didn’t think that we would be where we are now,” he explained.

“And as the war went on, I saw that many things were just going back to the way they were.”

Speaking up for the hostages in captivity

He doesn’t remember the exact turning point that brought him back out to protest for the hostages, but he knows it had to do with his friend Mai Albini-Peri, whose grandfather Chaim Peri was killed in Hamas captivity.

Hostages who returned to Israel in the November deal shared updates about Chaim, who was alive in captivity when they were released. Last month, the IDF informed his family that he had been killed while he was still held hostage.

“I don’t exactly know what was going through my head,” said Alroey, thinking about his decision to begin protesting again. “I do know that I thought a lot about Mai, and I [wondered] how would I behave if it was my grandfather or grandmother? Something about that really affected me,” he said, adding that he wondered how he would want his friends to behave if his family were held hostage.

“So when I got out of reserve duty, I said ‘Okay, there is no choice here. Mai needs me, people need me,’ and I got into it.”

At that point, Alroey already felt sure that the government was not doing all it should be doing. He realized, as he saw more and more people released from reserve duty, that on a practical level the war was winding down, but the hostages were still in Gaza.

Hearing that IDF forces were leaving Khan Yunis further drove the point home for him. “You realize that in some sense, the war is over – and the hostages aren’t back. And that is when I understand that if a deal isn’t made now, then they are dead.

“That really defines my protest,” he explained.

Alroey was walking at the front of the march on Saturday and holding a banner, when he noticed some friction between police and protesters. It didn’t look serious to Alroey, until he noticed that an acquaintance of his, who is also the family member of one of the hostages held by Hamas, was speaking to an officer and the situation “didn’t look good.”

“The smart thing would have probably been to ignore them,” he said, but because he knew the protester, Alroey approached the two.

“I told the officer that it wasn’t okay, how he [the officer] was speaking to him, that his behavior was not professional, and not the behavior of a cop.”

“He really didn’t like that, and he jumped on me,” said Alroey, clarifying that he was a few meters from the officer when he spoke to him and there was nothing threatening about his behavior.

Grabbed violently by the police officer at the protest

“He jumped on me and grabbed me. I don’t remember exactly what happened, but I fell to the ground,” Alroey described.

“I am with my back to the ground and he is above me, and then he just spits on me – he spits in my face.”

Alroey’s friend grabbed him and pulled him away, and his mother, who was also at the protest, came over to ask Alroey if he was all right.

“I told her, ‘Listen, a cop just spat in my face.’ He didn’t have a name tag, and I grab my mom and say ‘Lets go ask what his name is.’

“I went over there with my mom,” he said, indicating that he was not looking to cause trouble. “I wanted his name because I wanted to complain about him, or because of the principle,” he said.

In response to Alroey asking him for his name, and in front of his mother, the officer slammed him into the ground, he said.

Alroey was then knocked into the hood of a car, and pushed around until he eventually ended up in the arms of the protester trying to protect him, footage from the incident shows.

On the ground he was kicked and pulled free from the other protester and then handcuffed and dragged away. It was then, when he was restrained and lying on the ground, that the officer who spat on him came over to him and slapped him across the face, said Alroey. 

Footage showed the officer saying to Alroey, “I won’t identify myself to you, you son of a b****.” The officer then told Alroey, “I am going to rape your mother.”

The officer’s friends dragged him away, and this is when the violence stopped, said Alroey. Soon after, Alroey was arrested and charged with attacking a police officer and making threats.

All of this happened in front of the commander of the Moriah Police station, who did not intervene significantly or address the officer in the moments after he made the comments.

The whole incident also unfolded in front of Alroey’s mother and siblings, who had been attempting to help him throughout the entire violent arrest.

“It was a horrifying situation for them,” he said. “And, of course, my mother was very insulted.

“I think the officer might have known that my mother was there,” he said, explaining that in videos of the arrest, his mother can be heard trying to help Alroey, telling officers that she is his mother.

At the station, Yoni Nussbaum, a lawyer with the Legal Assistance for Protesters organization who came to represent Alroey and other people arrested at the protest, told him that the footage of the officer’s threats were all over the place and that the police had publicly condemned the officer’s behavior.

“Somehow, from nowhere, the charges of attacking an officer and making threats disappeared, and I am charged only with disturbing the public order,” a less serious charge, Alroey said. He was allowed to go home soon after.

REFLECTING ON police behavior at protests, Alroey expressed doubt about their priorities, saying that the choice to arrest so many protesters and to invest such significant efforts in blocking protests is a choice that keeps them from protecting citizens in other areas.

Since the start of 2023, there have been over 1,600 arrests of protesters, and, of these, only seven have resulted in an indictment, according to data from Legal Assistance for Protesters, indicating that these arrests are made needlessly, or are used by police as a way to deter protesters.

Alroey says that he believes in systems and thinks that a police force is necessary for any functioning country, but his trust in Israel Police these days is nonexistent.

Despite the difficulties and fears involved, Alroey doesn’t feel he has the privilege to stop protesting for the hostages.

“I believe in what I do. It’s not always fun for me; it can even be scarring,” he said.

In spite of this, Alroey feels he can’t stop fighting to bring the captives home. 

“Especially now, when I think about the fact that there are people who have a brother, or son, or friend, or cousin, or grandpa held hostage. I don’t have the privilege to go easy on myself.

“There are real people [held hostage]; this isn’t something hypothetical,” he said, adding that there needs to be a hostage deal now and calling on Israelis to join the protests because the government is not doing enough to bring them back. “It’s a fight for people who are flesh and blood.”

Israel Police condemned the incident with the officer who is seen threatening Alroey, saying that the officer’s behavior is “not in line with the norms for speech and behavior that are expected from every officer,” and that it would examine the incident.

It has yet to respond to The Jerusalem Post’s request for comment on other elements of the incident detailed here, or to answer the Post’s repeated question of whether the threatening officer has continued work as normal or been suspended.