Dozens of street shop and business owners from the clothing industry demonstrated in Tel Aviv on Tuesday in protest of the financial ramifications of Israel's coronavirus lockdown.
Demonstrators gathered in south Tel Aviv ahead of a Cabinet meeting that was expected to convene in the afternoon, with some protesters tying nooses around their necks and others lifting signs blasting the political class and its bungled handling of the pandemic.
Business owners protest COVID-19 lockdown in Tel Aviv
(Video: Nitzan Dror)
"We've reached the end of our businesses, we're running out of air. We can’t breathe anymore," one protester who runs a clothing store told Ynet.
"High street shops are the safest, why are they closing us?"
"This government is backward and its decisions are bizarre and ridden with political interests. We, the middle class, are collapsing; we haven't been working for 10 months and we haven't worked between lockdowns," a protester said.
"The government encourages people to stay home, without any logic, and we the self-employed pay for everyone. We want the government to take care of us. Schools stay opened but street shops that can barely host four people at the same time are closed. Who let these politicians run a country? I'm so mad at the leadership and what they're doing to us, it's a crime and we'll get our say in the polls.
"The protest today is a warning sign to the government that has abandoned the street shops and the self-employed and left them to deal with the lockdown and their loans to the banks by themselves.
"Around 80,000 businesses have collapsed due to the coronavirus crisis and it is time for Jerusalem to wake up because this policy has failed."