President Isaac Herzog spoke with a small but loud group of activists protesting near his house in north Tel Aviv on Saturday, agreeing with them that extremist elements needed to be removed from the current government, as they berated him for not doing enough in their view to safeguard Israel’s democracy.

As the president stood surrounded by security guards and holding a tallit bag and prayer books, apparently on the way to or from the synagogue, one of the activists shouted, “You’re the president of a Kahanist government, you should be up in arms about it!”

The protesters were referring to National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir, who is a disciple of the late racist rabbi Meir Kahane, founder of the now-banned Kach party which advocated for the expulsion of Arabs from Israel.

Herzog replied: “Of course, Kahanism needs to be removed from the government.”

A video of the incident posted to social media showed a small group of activists constantly interrupting and talking over the president as he tried to speak about his efforts to encourage unity within Israeli society, amid the ongoing war against Hamas in Gaza.

When the protesters asked him to label far-right members of the government, specifically National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir, as a “danger to democracy,” Herzog said he speaks up when he feels it’s necessary, as he did last year during the government’s contentious judicial overhaul, which has been frozen.

“Excuse me, did you not see what happened in Jit?” demanded one of the protesters, referring to the West Bank village where a Palestinian man was killed Thursday amid a violent rampage of extremist Jewish settlers, the latest in a spate of West Bank attacks against Palestinians.

“Jit is being taken care of,” said Herzog, condemning the “extremely grave” incident. However, the president said, it must be remembered that of the “half a million Israeli citizens” who live in West Bank settlements, “99 percent are law-abiding.”

He told the protesters that he believes in “the State of Israel and Israeli society and Israeli democracy.”

“And Israeli democracy will win,” the president added.

The protesters brushed off Herzog’s insistence that he represents all Israeli people and that he has repeatedly called for unity with cries of, “So what!”

In a lull of a few seconds when some of the activists quieted down the rest of the crowd, Herzog reiterated that he meets with the families of hostages held by Hamas in Gaza every day, along with bereaved Israelis.

“You’re just giving me grief,” he told the crowd.

The war in Gaza erupted after Hamas’s October 7 massacre, which saw some 3,000 terrorists burst across the border into Israel by land, air and sea, killing some 1,200 people and seizing 251 hostages, mostly civilians, many amid acts of brutality and sexual assault.

Relatives of hostages still held in Gaza, along with anti-government activists, have regularly protested outside the homes of senior officials since in a bid to push for a hostage-ceasefire deal and to call for early elections and the ouster of Netanyahu and his government.