The group had been under surveillance by an Israeli team and Mexican police for months

Undated image of Jacob Daskal. (screen capture: New York Daily News - via Times of Israel)

After allegations of a toxic workplace culture that discriminates against women and people of color, the Southern Poverty Law Center is trying to emerge and chart a way forward. Turmoil in the civil rights organization last month resulted in the firing of its famous founder and the resignations of its longtime president and legal director.

On Sunday, Israelis of Ethiopian descent took to the streets of Tel Aviv to protest against systemic discrimination. The demonstrations, triggered by a leaked video showing police officers physically assaulting an Ethiopian Israeli soldier and then filing false charges against him, soon turned violent, with many expressing fears of greater civil unrest to come. The demonstrations have been compared to the anti-police-brutality protests in many of America’s cities, most recently Baltimore.

Fifteen civil rights groups and seven individuals filed a federal lawsuit yesterday against the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) of B'nai B'rith, claiming the Jewish group violated their civil and privacy rights by spying on their activities. The lawsuit, based in large part on facts that have emerged in a criminal probe of the ADL in San Francisco, not only pits Arab-American groups against the ADL, but several other civil rights groups representing African Americans, Latinos and Jews, as well as various social causes such as the anti-apartheid movement and those opposed to police abuse.

Nisreen Salem is an Afro-Palestinian from Egypt who has been mocked due to her skin colour and hair for most of her young life. The 25 year old is one of at least 400 Afro-Palestinians from Nigeria, Egypt, Chad, Senegal and Sudan who live within the walls of occupied Jerusalem's Old City, adjacent to Al-Aqsa Mosque compound.