CNNI was covering in detail racial protests turned violent in Tel Aviv Israel today. While the first video I found of it was from April 30th, the protests continue today in Tel Aviv.
The protests were allegedly sparked by a viral video of a white Jewish policeofficer beating on a Ethiopian Jew, who happens to be a veteran of Israel's military. The video is silent, and shows an interaction between a cop (it could be anywhere in America) where he is obviously pushing on the man's bicycle and telling him to move along. The officer starts to walk away and the man, Damas Pakedah -wearing his IDF uniform at the time - apparently asks a question or says something else to the officer, whose response is to jump him. Now, this man, Mr. Pakedah, hangs onto a post until the cops (another officer had joined him briefly) gives up, and lets go of him. He then continues to speak out against them and picks up a large rock, which provokes the officer who initiated the violence of the encounter, to place his hand on his gun, in an apparent threat response. But his fellow officer seems to have him under control and they decide not to shoot the man and Damas drops his rock.
In April 2015 an Ethiopian soldier in the IDF was the victim of an unprovoked and allegedly racist attack by an Israeli policeman and the attack was caught on video. The soldier, Damas Pakedeh, was arrested and and then released, after being accused of attacking the policeman. Pakedah is an orphan who emigrated from Ethiopia with his siblings in 2008. He believes the incident was racially motivated and that if the video had not been taken, he would have been punished. Instead, the police officer and volunteer were suspended pending an investigation. Likud MK Avraham Neguise called on National Police Chief Yohanan Danino to prosecute the police officer and volunteer, saying they engaged in “a gross violation of the basic law of respecting others and their liberty by those who are supposed to protect us.” The Jerusalem Post notes that in 2015 " there have been a series of reports in the Israeli press about alleged acts of police brutality against Ethiopian Israelis, with many in the community saying they are unfairly targeted and treated more harshly than other citizens." - Wikipedia entry
It looks like any average action between a black man and a cop in Anytown in America.
What is striking is how the protests in Tel Aviv today looked much like Baltimore on last Monday, April 27th. View it here and here (thanks to a commenter who pointed my errors in video links)
Ethiopian Jews were brought to Israel in several waves by the Israel government and religious bodies as part of the Right To Return. Evidence of racism was shown by opposing parties in Israel by first demanding a clear rabbinical decision that they were, in fact, Jews.
In April 1975, the Israeli government of Yitzhak Rabin officially accepted the Beta Israel as Jews, for the purpose of the Law of Return (An Israeli act which grants all the Jews in the world the right to immigrate to Israel).
Later on, Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin obtained clear rulings from Chief Sephardi Rabbi Ovadia Yosef that they were descendants of the Ten Lost Tribes. The Chief Rabbinate of Israel did however initially require them to undergo pro forma Jewish conversions, to remove any doubt as to their Jewish status.
Regarding religious leadership, 60 Kessim (priests) of the Ethiopian immigrants in Israel are employed by the Ministry of Religious Services, and many of them conduct religious ceremonies in Israel. They are however not recognized as rabbis and do not have the authority to perform marriages. Nevertheless, a new generation of rabbis of Ethiopian origin trained in Israel are gradually taking over.
Due largely to a high rate of illiteracy, the Ethiopian Jews have had a difficult time being absorbed into Israeli society and economy. The biggest challenge to the Israeli Ethiopian Beta Israel community probably lies in the very low level of formal education of the immigrants. With few exceptions, when they first arrived to Israel they had no useful training for a developed economy like that of Israel, and in addition to that they did not know Hebrew. But as younger generations born or raised in Israel and educated in Israel, they are experiencing this less and less. But still, Ethiopian Jews make 30-40% less than Arabs citizens of Israel, themselves a minority group that experiences a high ethnic-based state of bigotry. Unemployment among the Ethiopian Jewish community in 2005 was as high as 65% for those over the age of 45. As of 2011, The Ethiopian Jews, known as the Beta Israel community, made up about 1.75% of Israel's population, at approx 126,000.
Other discriminatory attitudes persist within Israel for the Beta Israel community, such as:
* delays in immigration processing
* mayors of small towns like Or Yehuda in 2005 refusing to accept Ethiopian immigrants because he felt they would lower property values and increase crime in the area. Sounds familiar, doesn't it?
* Ethiopians blood donations are routinely disposed of as a matter of the public health policy. Officially it was thought that blood donations of the immigrants would have high rates of Hepatitis B, which was found to be largely untrue. Of the 5200 immigrants that arrived in the late 90s during Operation Solomon, only 2.3% were found to be carriers of HIV.
* Ethiopian women were reported in 2010 to have been given Depo-Provera for birth control while in transition camps awaiting processing without their full knowledge of the effects of the drug and without consent. The practice was first reported in 2010 by Isha le'Isha, an Israeli women’s rights organization. Hedva Eyal, the author of the report, stated: "We believe it is a method of reducing the number of births in a community that is black and mostly poor."
I used the Wiki entry as much of the source of quick info on the background of Ethiopian Jews, but also I read every link of their sources and researching other news articles to make myself reasonably certain of the information provided. I'm also watching the CNNI coverage as I put this together. I'm not a reporter or regular blogger, but this news struck me, as much as it did anyone seeing it on CNN and the worldwide media including Al Jazeera, of the shock that Tel Aviv could look so much like Baltimore MD and the types of "race riots" so often seen in America lately, is happening elsewhere. The recently re-elected Israeli Prime Minister Betanyahu is planning on a meeting with community leaders and police on Monday, to engage in a discussion on how to avoid these sorts of "American policing problems" - per the phone-in reporter on CNN I'm listening to right now.