The violence has officially arrived to the Israeli government. Or maybe it was here all along.

Since yesterday's Knesset vote to disband democratic structures, the police has aggressively upped its use of violence against protesters. Guess who is happy today.

A woman named Ifat Brilliant shared the following photo of her 18-year-old son being arrested by the police last night. You can see that while two police officers are holding him tight on each side, the one on his right has one arm in a choke-hold around the boy, and with the other hand he is punching the boy in the face with his fist. The boy already has a bloodied face and is grimacing. The police officer is laughing.

Welcome to the new Israel. The police are having a party.

The boy’s mother shared the following text:

This is my son. He is just 18. He was arrested last night in Ayalon [the Tel Aviv highway where protests have been taking place for weeks]. He wasn’t doing anything. He wasn’t cursing. He wasn’t going wild. He was protesting for democracy. After they handcuffed him, they took him to the side and started beating him up. Enlarge the photo. It’s shocking.

This ‘lovely’ police officer you see in the photo is punching him in the face. He was also whispering to him the whole time, ‘I’m going to rape your mother.’ Then he asked the other police officer for water. He took the water, threw it in the air, and stomped on it. Then started punching my son again.

Share widely. This is the face of evil.

This morning, my channels were flooded with stories like this. Videos of police dragging, hitting, and throwing non-violent protesters. Take a look at this one. (warning, violent images)

The police grabbed this person by the hair, dragged them, and threw them over a wall.

In the following clip, you can see a police officer punching a protester who is already on the ground. Even his colleague tries to get him to stop, but to no avail.

These protests are extremely non-violent, as I’ve shared before. Despite the right-wing spin, you can see from the clip below that the pro-democracy protests are non-violent. People are coming from a place of intense fear and concern for their country, but are not acting in violence. Even if you don’t like road closures, it is still a tactic of NON-VIOLENT RESISTANCE, as the BBC reported in their video here, that is being treated with violence, water cannons and more. You can see in the following clip, which was taken shortly after yesterday’s vote, protesters are singing and dancing. Despite the enormous pain they are in, they are singing and waving flags.

The use of verbal violence is also telling. The officer threatening to “rape your mother” is acting like a rapist. How is that considered legitimate police activity? How is sexual violence okay? How is threatening a boy’ mother okay? And can we talk about how deep the guy’s misogyny must flow in him in order for him to even come up with that line?

Radio reports this morning described many accounts of this kind of verbal violence and threats while punching protesters. And in one particularly bizarre account, a female mounted police officer trampled a female protester while calling her, “Fatso! [Ya shmena!] Hey fatso! Why don’t you try being less fat!” The talk show panelists were shocked by this because of how it seems so out-of-left-field and far from what might be considered reasonable police action. (I guess once reasonableness is no longer required of our ministers and head of state, it is no longer expected of people down the line, certainly not of the police.)

For me, I heard the “rape your mother” and “fatso” as reflections of patriarchy that are completely embedded in this move towards dictatorship and the police state. It’s all connected. The drive for absolute power is deeply connected to racism and misogyny. This government has already begun sending women back generations, removing protections and rights. More to come on this. (I plan to write a column summarizing all that this government has done to women in the past six months….)

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The easy slide to police violence against protesting civilians has been one of the first and most glaring acts of the incoming dictatorship. I wrote about this last week as well. Because ultimately, the whole point of this government, with all its 200 bills aimed at regime overhaul, has one primary goal: to silence all opposition.

THE difference between democracy and dictatorship is about whether people who are not holding power have any rights, voice, or protections. In a functioning democracy, there are checks and balances in order to ensure that one person does not hold ALL the power ALL the time. There are rules and restrictions and things that even the head of state cannot do. In a functioning democracy, the media, for example, has a vital voice to express criticism and to demand transparency and to represent the views of those in the minority. The court system is in place in order to ensure that nobody’s basic rights get trampled by those in power.

This is exactly what their endgame it. These are PRECISELY the mechanisms that are on Bibi’s chopping block. It is PRECISELY the voices of the critical minority that Bibi and his posse are working to stymie and stifle. And if they can get with doing it violently, all the better….The more violent the government is against its critics, the less likely people will be to criticize. Or at least that’s what he’s hoping.

Israel was already in a precarious place when it comes to democracy because there is no separation between the executive and legistlative branches, there is only one house of parliaent, and there is no constitution. So really, all Bibi has to do was to get rid of the Supreme Court and he’s basically done. Boom. That process officially started yesterday. it’s been in the works for months — possibly years. But yesterday, the Basic Laws of Israel changed to remove “reasonableness”, which is effectively the Court’s right to check the rest of the government. That’s gone now.

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And who are the critics that Bibi so desperately wants to stifle?

First it was the Palestinians, who have been experiencing this kind of violence for decades.

Then it was leftists, especially those who dare to listen to the voices of Palestinians, or more significantly, vote for competing parties.

Women. Who threaten the patriarchal system.

The media. Who once in a while dare to report the truth.

Tel Avivians. Symbols of the Left.

The LGBTQ community.

American Reform and Conservative Jews.

Democrats.

Protesters….

Not necessarily in that order.

Enemies of the state. One by one, picked off by a Prime Minister whose entire goal is nothing other than ultimate power.

I know it sounds like the poem, “First they came for….” But it is true. We did not listen to Palestinians when they were saying that their protests are stifled with cruel violence. We didn’t listen. We allowed the dehumanization. The labeling. Calling protesters “terrorists” makes it all okay. We allowed that. And now here we are.

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The head of the police, Itamar Ben Gvir — the man who believes so passionately in the use of violence, especially against Palestinians, just as his idol, the late Meir Kahana did, that the IDF refused to enlist him for compulsory service — Ben Gvir got on the radio this morning and said, “I am very happy with the job that the police are doing. It’s much better now than it was with the previous head”, who recently resigned resigned for refusing to abide by Ben Gvir’s directives to “fill Ichilov [hospital] with protesters.”

This is how we got here. The man who believes that killing random Palestinians is an act of heroism — as Baruch Goldstein did, the man whose portrait hangs on Ben Gvir’s wall — the man who holds those beliefs and was voting in to the tune of 15 mandates, some 12.5% of voters, that man is now in charge of the police and how to handle anti-government protesters. It doesn’t matter than half a million people in Israel want real democracy. According to our new police chief — who also, by the way, has a 2000 man private militia to do with as he pleases — violence against protesters is a good thing. It literally makes him giddy.

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This is where we are. We are in the middle of a swift decline into a violent police state. And we are here because those in charge want to completely stifle all opposition and criticism, and they are very comfortable with the process of dehumanization involved, and even violence.

We are here. The process is underway, and there is very little we can do now to stop it.

Except this. Writing and sharing are our greatest tools right now. So this is what I’m doing. Shining the light in the darkness. If you want to help in that process, please share.