Israel’s chief of police said Tuesday that migrants, Ethiopians and Arabs in Israel were naturally targets of police suspicion.
“All over the world it is proven that migrants are more involved in crime than others,” said Roni Alsheich at a meeting Tuesday with the Israel Bar Association. “This also goes for Arabs… and also in East Jerusalem.”
“When a policeman meets a suspect [of Ethiopian descent] naturally he is more suspicious than with others. We know this. We have started to deal with this,” Alsheich said, according to Middle East Eye, a London-based news site.
When he made his remarks, Alsheich was responding to a question about police violence, according to Haaretz.
Inbar Bugala, a leader of the recent Ethiopian-Israeli social protests told Haaretz: “This is not the first time we’re hearing that [the police] relate to us as criminals."
Ethiopian-Israelis have long said that they are treated poorly not only by the police but by Israeli society in general.
Last year, the rate at which indictments were filed against Israelis of Ethiopian background was more than twice as high than it was against the population as a whole.
Also last year, Israel’s Ethiopian community staged large protestss against racism and marginalization that turned violent, with protesters hurling rocks at police and police using stun grenades on the crowd.
This year has also seen angry uprisings by Ethiopian-Israelis. Hundreds of Ethiopian-Israelis protested in Tel Aviv last month over the death of Yosef Salamsa, an Ethiopian-Israeli man who committed suicide in 2014 allegedly because of police abuse, according to the Times of Israel.
In February, Israel’s Justice Ministry said that a criminal investigation into Salamsa’s death would be closed without any charges against the police, and the Ethiopian community in Israel is clearly not satisfied with that finding.
