Activists protest police shooting of Ethiopian teen
JERUSALEM — Scores of activists returned to streets across Israel on Wednesday to protest the killing of an EthiopianIsraeli teen by an offduty police officer in what the community calls the latest example of police brutality and discrimination in Israeli society.
Protesters attempted to block a main thoroughfare in Tel Aviv before being dispersed by police. Five protesters were arrested for “attempts to cause disturbances,” including hurling stones and carrying petrol bombs, as police, deployed at demonstration sites throughout the country, braced for more violence.
But Wednesday’s demonstrations appeared calmer than those of the previous night, when outrage over the killing touched off violent clashes, with demonstrators attacking police and vandalizing vehicles in response to what they see as ongoing police brutality.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu urged calm and convened a ministerial committee to discuss “all issues” affecting Israel’s Ethiopian community, which suffers from poverty and neglect and accuses the police of excessive force.
“We will discuss all issues but we will also discuss something that is unacceptable,” he said. “We are not prepared to either accept or tolerate the blocking of roads and the use of violence, including firebombs against our forces, the burning of cars or any other property of citizens.”
Police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said more than 110 officers were wounded in the protests, including from stones and bottles hurled at them.
The demonstrations erupted after Solomon Teka, 18, was fatally shot in a Haifa suburb on Sunday and escalated after his funeral on Tuesday. The officer in question says he was at a public playground with his young children and felt their lives were in danger from a group of rioting teenagers.
The protesters view the killing as part of a pattern of systematic discrimination and violence by police.
The Ethiopian Jews, who trace their lineage to the ancient Israelite tribe of Dan, began arriving in large numbers in the 1980s, when Israel secretly airlifted them to the Holy Land to save them from war and famine in the Horn of Africa.
Over time, many have integrated more into Israeli society, serving in the military and police and making inroads in politics, sports and entertainment.
But the community continues to suffer from widespread poverty, and many in the community complain of racism, lack of opportunity and routine police harassment. Today, they number around 150,000 out of Israel’s 9 million citizens.