Meet the clown of Jerusalem who brings love and laughter to violent protests

With a bright red nose and plastic flowers sprouting from her helmet, a Jerusalem clown is bringing heart-shaped stickers to protests where she tries to interrupt outbreaks of violence across the city.

The clown character Az-Oolay, sporting braces and oversized boots, was created in 2020 when anti-government protests rocked West Jerusalem.

“In Jerusalem … it’s inevitable that you see things blow up, and blood. And I don’t want to let the pain and hate and violence rule my life and the life of the city,” she said.

She has since taken her performance to demonstrations in the city’s ultra-Orthodox Jewish community, as well as Palestinian rallies in occupied East Jerusalem where she has faced injury and arrest.

“I didn’t want to enter violence or anything, I was scared, I went just to see, out of curiosity,” she said, after being drawn to a demonstration against Benjamin Netanyahu when he was prime minister.

Az-Oolay, an Israeli from Jerusalem who studied theatre in the US, decided to return as a clown police officer and hand out stickers.

“It seems naive and simple, but it’s actually saying: ‘I see you’. This is what people want, just to be seen,” she said.

Her character's full Hebrew name, Az-Oolay Yehiye Yoter Tov, means “then maybe things will be better”.

Parts of the costume play on the police uniform. Instead of a radio, she wears a soft heart attached to a cable, while a butterfly replaces a baton.

Standing in a Jerusalem garden, she mimics the officers she has seen marching down streets pointing their weapons.

Az-Oolay described the heavily armed officers as being dressed up “like robots”, who throw stun grenades at civilians “like sweets”.

Stun grenades, which explode with an ear-piercing bang and shatter into pieces, are used regularly against crowds by Israeli police.

The appearance of a clown is intended to make people open up to others in the deeply divided city, said Az-Oolay, as well as challenge the perception that weaponry protects residents.

“The narrative we have grown up on is that just with the power of our force we are safe. I bring another narrative and it’s very hard to swallow,” she said.

While Az-Oolay is greeted positively by most demonstrators, some people responded angrily.

“We got very, very tangled. We grew up into fear, into hate, into narratives that block our heart and our mind,” she said.

After more than a year attending protests, Az-Oolay was arrested last December. She admitted to shouting at a police officer in Sheikh Jarrah, an East Jerusalem neighbourhood where numerous Palestinians have been served eviction orders by Israeli courts.

Police told The National she was detained for “breach of public order, obstructing policemen and insulting a public official”.

After spending a few days in jail, Az-Oolay returned to demonstrations.

In video footage taken in April near the city’s Damascus Gate, a police officer repeatedly hits Az-Oolay with a gun while other officers detain a child.

Police said she was “interfering with the police work and thwarting them”. They said she was “evacuated” from the area rather than arrested.

She said she was at a march by Israeli nationalists last Sunday when one of the participants used pepper spray against a Palestinian woman nearby.

The clown has a heart sticker between her eyebrows and a golden genie attached to her waist, into which children whisper their wishes, but Az-Oolay cannot predict how the violence will end in Jerusalem.

Instead, she asked why the focus is still on force rather than questioning the status quo.

“We are investing in bullets. This is our investment, so what do you think will happen?” she said.

“If you plant a seed of melon, you will have a melon. If you plant bullets, you will have bullets.”