The Knesset plenum on Wednesday held a special meeting to discuss the protests by Ethiopian-Israelis against what they refer to as excessive police violence against members of the community. MK Avraham Naguisa (Likud) said the "straw that broke the camel`s back was the assault on Corporal Damas Pakada. He was brutally attacked by two police officers while in IDF uniform. Luckily, there was a camera there to document the incident, otherwise Damas would have been in jail today and no one would know what had happened there. The rage of the protesters has been building up for a long time. They merely wanted to legally express their anger over the police`s violence." MK Aliza Lavie (Yesh Atid) said "In Israel, quiet protests are ignored. The Ethiopians` expression of their pain, insult and injustice through dialogue, in an attempt to achieve understanding and sympathy, did not bring about change... Had it not been for the camera that documented the assault on Damas Pakada, he would have been charged with assaulting a police officer, and we never would have known what had happened. Israel must immediately recognize the existence of discrimination against Ethiopian Israelis... which also exists in the non-institutional sphere - in schools, police profiling and entrances to clubs." MK Roy Folkman (Kulanu) said that despite the funneling of hundreds of millions of shekels over the past decade to aid the Ethiopian community, data show that the gaps in most fields have not narrowed "at the appropriate pace." During the plenary session, MK Omer Barlev (Zionist Camp) said, "In Israel 2015 there is no room for racism, certainly not among those who are in charge of enforcing the law, but the assaulting officers are merely the gatekeepers. Society is racist. The onus is on the Israeli government to uproot this problem." MK Ilan Gilon of Meretz told the plenum "it is safe to say that the absorption of the Ethiopian-Israelis shames their heroic immigration. Society excludes this community. I am very skeptical about the possibility that something will change." MK Itzhak Vaknin (Shas) said: "There is a problem here, with both the police`s conduct and our conduct as a society. We take violence within Israeli society lightly." MK Ahmad Tibi (Joint Arab List) said incidents such as the one in which Pakada was assaulted "occur almost everywhere. People are victims to police violence everywhere, and mainly in the weaker populations – Arabs, haredim and Ethiopians. Khair Hamdan was shot in the back by a policeman, and no action was taken against the shooter. Furthermore, yesterday we learned that the [Justice Ministry department that investigates police officers] has closed the case. You all displayed empathy for the young Ethiopian [soldier] because he is weak,because he is a soldier and because he is Jewish." MKs Mordhay Yogev (HaBayit HaYehudi) and Sharon Gal (Yisrael Beitenu) criticized Tibi`s comparison and noted that Hamdan tried to attack the police officer with a knife. Tibi said in response: "It bothers you that Arabs place a mirror in front of your ugly face. You want submissive Arabs who do not incite or cry out. You do not give them anything as well, because racism is racism." Speaking on behalf of the internal security minister, Deputy Minister Ofir Akunis (Likud) said "the time has come to put this terrible ethnic demon back in the bottle, so that it never comes out again. We have had enough of those who believe their culture is superior to that of their neighbors. Tibi has made cynical use of the incident. You tried to make a connection between the State`s treatment of the Arabs and its treatment of Ethiopians, but this cynicism is known here. If it were up to MK Tibi, the first, second and third aliyahs, as well as "Operation Shlomo, would have never taken place and Israel would not exist."
