Jerusalem Day 2025 Is Openly Genocidal, but Also Echoes Years Past

Every year, Palestinians in East Jerusalem brace for the violence of Jerusalem Day, when Israeli youth rampage through the Old City on a Flag March. In 2025, the ugly May 27 event was colored by the genocide underway in Gaza.

Jerusalem Day, Israel’s annual commemoration of the day it occupied the eastern side of the city in 1967 (per the Hebrew calendar), was yet one more orgy of violence on the backdrop of events in the rest of the occupied Palestinian Territories (oPT). A large banner hung outside Damascus Gate, the main entrance to the Old City, and emblazoned on t-shirts of right-wing youth rampaging through the city read, “No Nakba, No Victory,” urging the state to complete the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians today in Gaza as it did in 1948.1 The signs were produced by Im Tirtzu, the largest Zionist movement in Israel.

The Israeli daily newspaper Haaretz expressed horror at another slogan that read, “There is no school in Gaza, there are no children left,” calling it “a celebration of genocide” in its editorial.2

This same week, a poll was publicized showing that: 82 percent of Jewish Israelis support expelling Gaza’s residents; 56 percent support expelling Palestinian citizens of Israel (a percentage that is even higher among those under age 40—66 percent); and nearly half (47 percent) agreed that the Israeli military should model the biblical Israelites, who are said to have killed all of the inhabitants of Jericho after conquering the enemy city.3 Minister of National Security Itamar Ben-Gvir was surrounded by young men chanting, “Death to Arabs,” as he entered the Old City for the Flag Day march.

During the state-sponsored event where young people march across the city from West Jerusalem through the Old City and on to the Western Wall, waving and wearing large Israeli flags, many youths deliberately take a route through Damascus Gate. This takes them through the majority-Palestinian parts of the Old City, where they harass residents and vandalize shops, many of which remained shuttered during the march.

Under police protection and guard, they assault Palestinians and chant racist slogans like “May the memory of Palestine be erased,” “Muhammad is dead,” and “May they burn your  village.”

These slogans echo actual violence faced by Palestinians: the bombing and blockade of Gaza; violence and severe restrictions on movement throughout the West Bank; and home demolitions and forcible expulsion in East Jerusalem.

The police rarely act to protect Palestinians. Leftist organizations like Standing Together, Looking the Occupation in the Eye, and Ir Amim deployed among the marchers to try to protect Palestinians and their property, but they, too, were assaulted.4

The Old City is the heart of the conflict and the battle, said Imran Muhammad, a young Palestinian man from Silwan.

Israeli police informed neighborhood residents that all Old City entrances and main streets would be closed from noon that day into the late evening. Those who had not returned home would not be allowed to until the end of the Israeli celebrations. In 2024, police also prevented residents of the Old City from entering it and patrolled the streets until the evening.

“The clothing of the Jewish extremists is white, but their hearts are black and hateful and racist,” said Umm Abd al-Rahman, who lives in the Old City’s Qarmi neighborhood. Last year, she was pushed by extremist Jewish youths who shouted “Death to the Arabs” at her as she waited at Damascus Gate until 9:00 p.m. to go home.

The Flag March began in 1968 as a spontaneous procession by a Rabbi and his followers following a holiday event and evolved into a modest demonstration in the evening hours. This was during a period that the secular Labor movement dominated Israeli politics; the march was a sort of political “tax” paid to the religious Zionist movement, which was still not mainstream. But in 1974, the march began to grow, along with the influence of religious settler movements in Israel.

Today, the march has different starting points around the city. One group begins in the mostly Palestinian Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood outside the Old City and passes through the Lions’ Gate and the Palestinian community of Silwan, all the way to Bab Haret al-Maghariba, where non-Muslims can sometimes enter the grounds of al-Aqsa Mosque. Another march, mostly young women, begins at the Great Synagogue on King George Street in West Jerusalem and reaches Jaffa Gate. From there, the girls’ march goes directly to Zion Gate, via the Armenian Quarter, and on to the Western Wall. Male youth, on the other hand, march from Jaffa Gate to Damascus Gate, reaching the Muslim Quarter and Wadi Street, and then on to the Western Wall.

“Every year, extremist Jewish youths deliberately break the store’s locks or place a substance in the locks so they cannot be opened,” says Abu Saeed, the owner of a shop on Wadi Street.5 Once, he remained in the store when the marchers arrived, and he was attacked by young men, who smashed the store’s contents. He was beaten, insulted, and subjected to racist remarks, even insults against his religion and the Prophet Muhammad.

“The Israelis are suffocating Jerusalemites to the point of complete strangulation with no way out,” said another Palestinian, asking to remain anonymous.6 “There are no permits to build residential apartments, and there’s no space for us to breathe. Now, after they’ve crushed civil society, they’re competing with us over what’s left: the holy sites, both Islamic and Christian.”