Social activists participating in Saturday night’s demonstration were surprised to see a military Humner in the streets of Tel Aviv.  As they marched from Habima Square to the Tel Aviv Museum of Art, some of the demonstrators noticed that as part of the security arrangements, what seemed as a military Hummer truck with surveillance equipment, was on the scene.

The vehicle, known in the IDF as “Raccoon”, or by its English name “Stalker”, was introduced in 2001 and is mainly used in the Palestinian occupied territories. The large field vehicle is equipped with advanced data collecting systems, including radars with night and day identification capabilities, long-range cameras and monitoring systems.

The “Raccoon” near the social justice demonstration in Tel-Aviv, last Saturday (Photo: +972)

The surveillance equipment installed in the Stalker, which was developed by Israel’s Rafael Advanced Defense Systems, uses an optical camera along with a radar. The camera pole installed in the vehicle can be raised to a height of nine meters. The system, which can operate in almost every climate condition, uses automatic sensors to identify and scan suspicious activity. It is able to detect people at a distance of up to 10 kilometers, or up to 20 kilometers for larger objects. The Raccoon can be placed in a remote location, observe the town, and contact undercover forces in case of any criminal incident. Although the police are using the system in demonstrations, it is rarely seen in urban areas.

Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI) Attorney Avner Pinchuk said Sunday that “Israel has long used aggressive means to suppress demonstrations in the Occupied Territories, and last night we saw the use of similar tactics in Tel Aviv, where an armored surveillance vehicle was present at the social justice demonstration. The presence of such a vehicle has an obvious chilling effect on the freedom of expression.”