Dozens injured at Tel Aviv protest over police brutality

TEL AVIV , Israel, May 4 (UPI) -- Dozens of people were injured as a protest in Tel Aviv, Israel, over alleged mistreatment of Ethiopian Jews, turned violent.

Israeli police reported 57 injuries, most of them minor. Twelve protesters were also injured.

The demonstration, which took place on Sunday in Tel Aviv's Rabin Square, was prompted by a globally-seen video, released on April 26, of a police officer beating a uniformed Israel Defense Force soldier of Ethiopian decent.

As protesters blocked major highways and allegedly attempted to enter Tel Aviv's City Hall, they threw rocks, bottles and plywood planks at police, who responded with water cannons, smoke bombs and 43 arrests.

The video is regarded as a breaking point for Israel's 125,000 Ethiopian Jews, who arrived in two immigration waves in the 1980s and early 1990s. They are Jewish and black, and claim they have long endured second-class citizenship in Israel. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called for calm Sunday evening, saying, "There is no place for such violence and lawlessness." He will host a meeting Monday of Ethiopian Jewish leaders, which will also be attended by Demas Fekadeh, the soldier who appeared in the video.

Public Security Minister Yitzak Aharanovitz admitted, "Some of the complaints against the police were justified. There were events that need to be examined, and the police also has to check itself. All government and municipal offices need to provide a comprehensive solution."

Prior to the demonstration, organizers declined to compare the situation in Israel with that of Baltimore, Md., where protests over the death, in police hands, of a black suspect drew a week of angry protests and looting.

"The fact that we're black doesn't mean that we're Baltimore," an organizer, Inbal Bogale, told the Israeli newspaper Haaretz. "In Jerusalem we didn't 'do a Baltimore' as people are saying, that's not what it was about," she said, a reference to protests in the capital. "The police documented every moment of the demonstration and I want to see the documentation, whether we really started the violence as the police claim. We marched in the streets and they fired stun grenades at us."