"Expel the Arab enemy" read bright yellow and black signs in English and Hebrew, carried by sweet looking Jewish grandmotherly women at Sunday's settler demonstration. The Jerusalem protest was called with the intention of marching through the neighborhood of Ala Abu Dhaim's, Merkaz Harav yeshiva attacker, and demolishing his family's home.

With chants like "Death to Arabs," the settlers tied to the religious Zionist movement fostered at Merkaz Harav, massed within blocks of Abu Dhiam's neighborhood.  Rounding police lines with some ease, a branch of the demonstration rushed into the neighborhood, stoning cars and smashing windows of the Palestinian residents. Those who couldn't get around the lines threw stones by from a ridge above the road at Palestinian cars driving by.

Over 500 settlers and their supporters, danced, prayed, clashed with reluctant Jerusalem police and army, all the time fuming with the rhetoric of ethnic cleansing. "If they can't live peacefully here, [Expel the Arab enemy] 100%," says Aryeh Rosenberg - an Israeli settler at the demonstration who's originally from Toronto, Canada.

 "At the begging I might have been against ethnic cleansing, but at this point, yes. They just can't live here," contends the bearded twenty-something frontiersman in front of several hundred dancing protestors. "I'm happy with them in Canada, I don't care as longs as they are not killing me over there," he adds, attempting to appear moderate. 

This was the scene that Israel wanted the world to see: cops chasing settlers to ostensibly protect the Palestinian population. Stationing several hundred police offers and soldiers to manage a restrained confrontation - creating a media image of a moderate Israel doing all it can to contain a violent fringe group - exemplified the shift in discourse the Israeli government has so desperately tried to generate. Through the almost choreographed playing out of events, Israel's desired identity, as a complex democracy where the security establishment walks a tough line between public security and individual rights, was reinforced. 

However, it's what wasn't internationally displayed on Sunday that creates a contextual body of information that dispels this myth. Israeli and international radio said nothing about the weeks of Knesset calls by rightwing members to expel Palestinian Israeli parliamentarians and their constituents from Israel. The newspapers neglected the past two months escalation of rhetoric from Kadima ministers calling to flatten Gaza neighborhoods, to Labour's Deputy Defense Minister Matan Vilnai announcing his intention to bring a bring a Shoah, or holocaust, on the Strip.

While camera's roamed freely around the Armon Hanatziv promenade, the army kept media out of the Palestinian neighborhood just blocks away. Approaching the Palestinian neighborhood, I saw at least 200 people in the street ready to defend their community from invasion. At the top of the street, in a formation similar to a Qalandia checkpoint clash, two army jeeps stood with doors open and soldiers clutching their guns and tear gas canisters, crouched behind their motorized metal forts.

Looking at my press pass, even the commanding officers refused to identify themselves before screaming at me in Hebrew to leave the area. It was clear that the possibility of Palestinians throwing stones in Jerusalem, against an advancing occupying army and its settler cadre, was not intended to be the message of the day.

Jerusalem's tension has thickened in the days following, with yet again another increase of Border Police in the Old City. Behind it's walls,  the state seeks to hide from its centrality in generating a racially charged atmosphere of dominance. Press officers were on hand to lead the media through the tail of anti-Semitism at the core of the stabbing of a settler Rabbi at Damascus gate on Tuesday, but the Border Police's response went unmentioned.

According to a friend who lives near the Damascus gate, after the stabbing, the security forces sealed off the old city, flooding it with soldiers. "The Army arrested hundreds of people, based on being Arab and wearing a black sweater," he said highlighting that they were only released once cleared by video footage. "They beat and kicked people through the streets," he added.