A group of radical left-wing activists broke into the offices of the conservative think tank Kohelet Policy Forum in Jerusalem on Sunday at noon and confronted the employees.

The incident was an escalation of a similar incident last month, when anarchists blocked the front entrance of the offices early in the morning.

The protesters, waving signs stating: “Kohelet advances the hatred of poor people” and “There is no G-d for racists” confronted the employees.

One employee, Moran Amitai, told Makor Rishon about the disturbing incident.  “All the employees were busy, like every day. The activists arrived at one of the entrances with a bouquet of flowers, they said they were looking for Debbie, the office manager. One of the employees opened the door because he thought they wanted to bring flowers to the office manager and they just held the door. Ten people came in and started yelling. Our office is divided into two parts, we locked one part of the office so they wouldn’t enter it. They started knocking on the door and yelling at us to open the doors. They refused to leave the office, shouting and threatening: ‘Stop your work. You hate the poor, you hate women.”
At one point one of the women ran to me and pushed me, we have it a video of it. I was attacked.”

“At this point, Meir Rubin (the director of Kohelet] decided to put an end to it. He demanded that they leave the office and they refused. They terrorized the office, I was really shaking at that point. They literally laughed in my face that I was shaking and scared. They just stood there and laughed. They called one of the employees a ‘violent Ashkenazi’ for taking pictures of them.”

“When they realized the police were on their way, they tried to leave. The police arrived and detained them for questioning.”

Simcha Rothman, the head of the Knesset’s Constitution Committee, responded to the report of the incident by stating: “There is only one thing worse than a violent break-in and attack on the offices of a research body like the Kohelet Policy Forum, and that is the backing and support it receives from prominent spokespeople on the Israeli left. They have no right to talk about democracy when they support and justify breaking the law and violence against people who hold other opinions.”

(YWN Israel Desk – Jerusalem)