Baltimore meets Jerusalem

Less than a week after race riots broke out in Baltimore, Maryland, Jerusalem gets its own clashes between Ethiopian Israelis and cops over police brutality. Several people were injured in the incident, which makes front page news in the Israeli press on Friday.

Yedioth Ahronoth’s coverage of what started as a peaceful demonstration outside police headquarters in Jerusalem appears to sympathize with the protesters. It reports that the roughly 1,000-strong “spontaneous protest” was organized on social media by young Ethiopian Israelis who “have an intimate knowledge of the issue of police brutality.” The demonstrators began marching toward the Prime Minister’s Residence, “each one of them with his personal pain, each one with his story of harsh encounters with the police.”

After they reached the street near Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s official residence and ignored orders to disperse, police deployed mounted officers and fired tear gas at the protesters. Israel Hayom appears to lean toward the establishment, reporting that “clashes between the two sides rapidly heated up” when the protesters responded to the tear gas, stun grenades and fire hoses with rocks and bottles.

Haaretz reports that two protesters were arrested and that 13 people — 10 protesters and three policemen — were injured. Two cops and five demonstrators required treatment at an area hospital.

One protester tells Israel Hayom that there will soon be protests in Israel like those in Baltimore, referring to the recent riots over police brutality that have crippled the East Coast city, in which shops were looted, buildings torched, 20 policemen injured and over 250 people arrested.

“Excessive violence by police has become part of the norm in the lives of the Ethiopian community,” Awka Mangisto tells the paper. “In the future there’ll be protests in Israel like in Baltimore. It’s only a matter of time. The police and courts are crippling the Ethiopian community. All Ethiopian immigrants are second-class citizens in the country. Among the youth in prison in Israel 30 percent are of Ethiopian background, while their percentage in the population is only 3%.”

Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat showed up at one point and met with the protesters in a bid to assuage them. Israel Hayom reports that, “in an extraordinary step” Barkat came to the heart of the protest and “sat on the ground with the protesters and listened to their plight.”

Haaretz reports that the mayor asked one protester whether she thought the entire government didn’t “want to embrace the Ethiopian community.” The protester responded saying “I don’t want a hug. Look at me like you look at a white person. I don’t need hugs. That’s a patronizing approach that says that I’m not capable, ‘therefore we’ll give them a hug.'”

Yedioth Ahronoth reports that the protest dispersed around midnight but that those involved said it was just “a preview.”

Meanwhile the International Criminal Court’s top prosecutor tells Haaretz that if the ICC were to launch war crimes investigations against Israel, it would be able to probe and charge lower ranking IDF personnel, not just the top brass. In an email interview with the paper, Fatou Bensouda dismissed concerns that possible investigations of Israeli officials by the court would be bent against Israel, saying her mandate will be carried out according to the Rome Statute in an independent and unbiased fashion.

Israel Hayom praises the as-yet-unimplemented housing reforms which the Kulanu party set as a condition for joining Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s governing coalition. The paper says the measure of raising taxes on investor apartments will drive down the cost of housing by raising the number of units on the market. The paper also says Israelis will start feeling the benefits of the promised reform on increased child subsidies agreed upon by Likud and United Torah Judaism.

Finance Ministry officials who spoke to Yedioth Ahronoth, however, say that part of Likud’s deal with the UTJ involves transferring a billion shekels to ultra-Orthodox education, some of which will come out of the general education budget.

Haaretz also commends Kahlon, though for a different reason, citing his success in “warding off two real threats that clouded the new government’s term — the planned legislation to weaken the Supreme Court and the so-called nationality law.” By ruling out a coalition deal clause which would force him to back legislation enabling the Knesset to reenact laws struck down by the Supreme Court, Kahlon “bolstered the principle of the supremacy of justice, a central pillar of democracy,” the paper says in its editorial.