Israel’s #BlackLivesMatter Moment?

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from Dissent magazine:


Israel’s #BlackLivesMatter Moment?
Joshua Leifer ▪ May 10, 2015


[font size="1"]Ethiopian-Israelis protest police brutality in Jerusalem, April 30 (Oren Ziv / ActiveStills)[/font]


On April 26, Demas Fikadey was on his way home in Holon, a city south of Tel Aviv, when he was beaten by two Israeli police officers investigating a report of a suspicious package. In the attack, which was caught on tape, Fikadey can be seen standing next to his bike when one policeman begins to shove and then punch him. Another policeman joins, and the two wrestle Fikadey to the ground. Fikadey, an Israeli of Ethiopian descent and soldier on active duty, was in uniform when the two policemen assaulted him.

The video of the attack went viral on Israeli social media, sparking protests in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv. Demonstrators chanted “A violent officer needs to be in jail” and “Is our blood only good for your wars?” In Tel Aviv, heavily militarized police violently dispersed the protest, firing water cannons, stun grenades, and tear gas into the crowd of demonstrators who had gathered in Rabin Square. “What happened on May 3, 2015 in Rabin Square in Tel Aviv was not like anything I had seen before,” wrote Israeli journalist Hayim Bar-Zahav, who was at the protest. “In my twelve years of professional work, I had not seen police violence like what I saw in Tel Aviv’s central square.”

It was not simply the video that brought thousands of people into the streets of Jerusalem and Tel Aviv to voice their anger and frustration, facing off against police on horseback. “A soldier in uniform deserves to be respected and appreciated. But it’s not just that,” Getenet, an Ethiopian resident of Ariel, a West Bank settlement, told Haaretz. Ethiopian-Israelis face discrimination, police violence, and structural inequality. For many, the video represented a breaking point.

While the Israeli government is eager, in its public-relations material, to portray smiling Ethiopian-Israeli soldiers and professionals as members of a diverse and tolerant society, the country’s Ethiopian community remains vastly underserved. A report published by the Meyers-JDC Brookdale Institute found that 41 percent of Ethiopian-Israeli families are poor, compared to 15 percent of families in the general Jewish-Israeli population. Twenty-nine percent of Ethiopian-Israelis between the ages of 22 and 35 lack a high school education, compared to 7 percent of all Jewish Israelis in that age bracket. The youth unemployment rate among Ethiopian-Israelis is 30 percent, compared to 19 percent among all Jewish Israelis. ......................(more)

http://www.dissentmagazine.org/blog/ethiopian-israelis-protest-police-brutality-blacklivesmatter

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