An Israeli protester holds a sign in Hebrew reading "violent policeman should be sentenced" during clashes between Israel's, mainly Jewish Ethiopians and Israeli riot police during a protest against racism and police brutality in Tel Aviv, Israel, Sunday, May 3, 2015, as several thousand people from Israel's Jewish Ethiopian minority protest, shutting down a major highway and clashing with police on horseback long into the night. The protest was mostly peaceful during the day, but by nightfall became violent with at least 20 officers were hurt and "multiple protesters" arrested, Police Spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said. (AP Photo/Oded Balilty) Israel’s ceremonial president said Monday that an outbreak of violent protests by Ethiopian Jews has “exposed an open, bleeding wound in the heart of Israeli society” and that the country must respond to their grievances.
Reuven Rivlin spoke a day after thousands of Ethiopian protesters clashed with police in Tel Aviv in an unprecedented scene of unrest and anger. The clashes reflected widespread frustration in the Ethiopian community, which three decades after it first arrived in Israel, has become an underclass plagued by poverty, crime and unemployment.
While Ethiopian Israelis have held demonstrations in the past, the protests have rarely turned violent, and never on the scale of Sunday’s unrest. The protesters shut down a major highway in Tel Aviv, hurled stones and bottles at police officers and overturned a squad car. They were dispersed with tear gas, water cannons and stun grenades. More than 60 people were wounded and 40 arrested.
The violence caught much of the country, including the government, off guard. Rivlin said Israel was seeing “the pain of a community crying out over a sense of discrimination, racism, and of being unanswered.” “We must look directly at this open wound. We have erred. We did not look, and we did not listen enough,” he said. “We are not strangers to one another, we are brothers, and we must not deteriorate into a place we will all regret.”
Later Tuesday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was to meet with community leaders.
Ethiopian Jews begin migrating to Israel three decades ago and struggled greatly as they made the transition from an impoverished and developing country into high-tech Israel. Over time they have integrated more into Israeli society, serving in the military and making inroads in politics, sports and entertainment. However, many complain of racism, lack of opportunity, endemic