A special Shomrim project brings you the colors, sounds and voices from the Black protest movement that has already started to bubble over into the Israeli art and culture scenes, inspiring a new generation of proud and conscious women and men. Ten monologues.
As a teen, Lior was slapped in the face by a cop • Rachel knows that this struggle will be passed down from generation to generation • And Binyamin puts it in a nutshell: “The fact that we eat falafel and they have hamburgers doesn’t make any difference; we’re all flesh and blood who suffer from the same international problem – the white man’s hold over the public expanse and key positions of power.”
COVID Ban on Flights Keeps Out Ethiopian Immigrants
COVID Ban on Flights Keeps Out Ethiopian Immigrants
300 Ethiopian Jews had been scheduled to arrive at Ben Gurion Airport as part of a plan that allowed 1,600 new immigrants. By Jan Jaben-Eilon January 29, 2021, 3:44 pm Edit 8 shares
Members of the Bitao family who arrived on January 22, 2021 as part of Operation Tzur Yisrael kiss the tarmac at Ben Gurion Airport (Avi Hayun/Keren Hayesod)
Last week’s ban on passenger airplanes arriving into Ben Gurion Airport, an attempt to control coronavirus variants, halted even incoming planes carrying new immigrants – a first for the State of Israel.
Israel’s Supreme Court Limits Racial Profiling, but Loopholes Remain Tara Kavaler
In landmark case, police must now have cause to ask for ID
In a landmark decision, Israel’s Supreme Court has unanimously held that there are limits to the police’s power to stop people and ask for identification.
The decision announced on January 26 was hailed by the Ethiopian community in Israel as well as by rights activists and organizations, who say the police disproportionally stop minorities such as Ethiopian Israelis and Arab Israelis. Their elation over the decision, however, is tempered by loopholes in the law and other police policies that will allow the practice of racial profiling to continue.
It the police fail to develop clear criteria within the three months, the current regulation will be rescinded, the court ruled. The court decision was rendered in response to petitions by a number of civil rights organizations, including the Association for Civil Rights in Israel and the Association of Ethiopian Jews.
The three-justice panel, headed by Supreme Court President Esther Hayut, also included Justices Hanan Melcer and Alex Stein. The demand that a person identify themself to a police officer through an identity card could lead to actual infringement of the right to human dignity, Hayut wrote, noting that if such a request is made in public, it might be perceived by passersby as a sign that the person was suspected of a crime and might also be carried out arbitrarily. Police officers have demanded IDs on a selective basis, she stated, leading to discrimination against certain minorities, even if it was without malicious intent.
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Jan. 3, 2021
Two years after the launch of a program to expunge the criminal records of Israelis who came from Ethiopia, only 23 have been pardoned, out of 115 applications that were submitted to the Ministry of Justice.
According to figures released this week by the ministry’s unit that deals with pardons, eight other applications are still under review, waiting for a decision. The Ministry of Justice and organizations helping people from Ethiopia say that the number of applications is lower than expected, describing the plan as a failure.
“I walk around with a sense of frustration over this plan, since with all the goodwill, it hasn’t really been a success,” attorney Nohi Politis, the head of the pardon-reviewing unit, told Haaretz.