Protest leads to arrests after speech by former Israeli president

MINNEAPOLIS – Minneapolis police have arrested three adults and two juveniles after protesting against a former Israeli prime minister who was giving a speech in downtown Minneapolis.

According to Minneapolis police, officers arrested a man, two women and two underage girls after observing individuals spray-painting public property. The protest took place outside the Minneapolis Depot, where former Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett was speaking at an event as the keynote guest.

The Free Palestine Coalition – the group that organized the protest – said in a statement that Bennett laid the groundwork for the current war between Israel and Hamas in the Gaza Strip.

Bennett has been outspoken in his support for the Israeli government’s actions, telling MSNBC on March 10: “The only acceptable outcome is the complete destruction of the terrorist state of Hamas alongside us, otherwise they will keep doing it again.”

The first Hamas attack on October 7, 2023, killed about 1,200 Israeli citizens. Since then, the Gaza Health Ministry reported more than 34,600 deaths in Gaza as of April 30.

The MSNBC interviewer asked him about the disproportionate number of casualties in this war, but Bennett insisted that Israel’s actions were justified by the first Hamas attack.

The event was hosted by the Center of the American Experiment, a right-wing think tank based in Golden Valley.

According to Britannica, Bennett first advocated a solution to the Israel-Palestine conflict in 2012 that would restrict Palestinians in the West Bank to living in urban areas and justify Israeli annexation of the Gaza Strip. He was elected prime minister in 2021 as the face of another conservative party and remained in the post until 2022.

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