[VIDEOS & PHOTOS IN EXTENDED ARTICLE]
Approximately 1,000 Ethiopian Israelis protested across Jerusalem, Thursday night, to demonstrate against the Israeli police. The protests turned violent as bottles, rocks and other debris was thrown at Israeli Security Forces. Water cannons, tear gas, horses, and other riot gear was brought in after all efforts to defuse the situation failed.
As YWN reported on Wednesday, a video surfaced earlier this week that showed two policemen in Holon assaulting an Ethiopian IDF soldier in an apparently unprovoked attack. The soldier is a member of Israel’s Ethiopian community and community leaders lament what they call police brutality against members of the community of a regular basis. It is pointed out that the Ethiopian community in Israel has protested against police brutality on numerous occasions. Community officials tell the media that too often when police arrest a member of the community, too often they do not hesitate to use unjustifiable force.
Israel Police Chief Yochanan Danino announced this week that the policeman caught on video beating a uniformed IDF soldier has been suspended and he will be dismissed from the force following a department hearing. Danino, who has been committed to weeding out corruption in his department stated “there is no room for officers like this in the department”.
Despite Danino making this statement, protesters took to the streets on Thursday night.
We’ve had enough! No to racism, no to discrimination. Our democracy is at risk. Enough to police violence,” protesters said, blocking the entrance to Jerusalem and its main artery.
“Apparently the streets of Israel must burn like they do in Baltimore, in order for someone to finally wake up. The apartheid regime is back, this time in 21st century Israel,” Gadi Yevarkan, head of the Campaign for Equality for Ethiopian Jews, told Ynet.
(Chaim Shapiro – YWN)
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11 Responses
Good for them! They’re Yidden like us and do not deserve to be mistreated. The Israeli police are a brutal bunch of thugs often times and a legitimate,justified beat-down is all too appropriate. Remember how they beat Yidden demonstrating in Kikar Shaabos, Beit Shemesh etc. It’s about they’re met with resistance!
African Israelis?
The situation there will never even come close to any riots in the USA. The Israeli police don’t sit around and watch the action like US police forces do. In the US, they always give the blacks “space to vent”. In Israel, no such thing ever happens. They knock ’em down with sheer brutality if needed.
Where is the formerly fat Al Sharpton when you need him? For once we could use that normally useless piece of garbage.
There is No difference between Baltimore & other inner cities and Israel! It’s the liberal governments that caused all these problems.
Police brutality, when it occurs, needs to be addressed, but if spokesmen for the Ethiopians make stupid statements like “The Apartheid Regime is Back,” they will lose any credibility. Sounds like they have been speaking with John Kerry—-perhaps the Obama administration are trying again to foment Israeli backlash and unrest…?
“They’re Yidden like us”
Not really.
Ethiopians are people who live in Ethiopia and are citizens of Ethiopia. People who live in Israel with Israeli citizenship are Israelis.
If this idea is not accepted, then riots are a natural outcome.
Send them back to drought ridden Ethiopia. There they can deal with Boko Haram and other entities. If they act like “them”, then they go back to their “home.”
I was told the majority of them are not Jewish and most of the crimes in israel is because of them the non Jewish ones.
shimanyankov (#10): Majority? Virtually none of them are.