Topless protester at Knesset sparks social media storm
She’s mad as hell and she’s not going to take it anymore – she’s taking it off, and she got the world’s attention.
That seemed to be the motto of one female protester in the anti-Netanyahu demonstrations on Tuesday night in Jerusalem who waved red antifa flags over her chest before baring her breasts atop a menorah statue on a traffic island near the Knesset.
Just as with the nude woman protester facing down anti-riot troops in Oregon, the photo of this Israeli woman went viral and got far more attention, both around the world and in Israel, than a thousand water cannons or clever signs would garner.
International news outlets from India to the US and everywhere in between carried photos of the woman, who told Haaretz’s Nir Hasson
that she is a social work student. This is significant because social workers have been on strike recently to protest their low wages and heavy workloads.
The Twitterverse and the rest of social media lit up over this brazen protest tactic, with hundreds weighing in. “Symbol of the State” was one Twitter hashtag with which this woman’s protest was still being discussed a day later.
Knesset Speaker Yariv Levin took notice, writing on Facebook: “Shame. I stand by every person’s right to protest, demonstrate and express their opinion. But there is no country that allows you to desecrate the symbols of the state .... [This woman should be] brought to justice, not only to punish her, but also because of the educational and civil message that needs to be very clear.”
Israeli politician
Tali Ploskov
spoke for many when she tweeted: “Not like this. Protest is a right, sometimes even a must, but not like that. Not in undressing, not in violence, not in bestiality. Not by humiliating the state emblem. You exaggerated, you lost your way. I would listen to you, but not like that.”
But the unnamed social work student had her fans, such as Naomi Alon, who claimed that in New York it is legal for women to walk the streets bare-breasted, and tweeted a photo of Scout Willis, the daughter of Bruce Willis and Demi Moore, walking shirtless in the Big Apple.
Others questioned why this one woman lifting her shirt drew more attention than the violence that erupted at some of the anti-government protests, but all agreed: This would probably encourage more people to take to the streets and maybe to take it all off.