An appeals court overturned the conviction of Mayer Herskovic, center, on Wednesday. He had been convicted in an attack on a black student that inflamed tensions between ultra-Orthodox Jews and African-American residents in Brooklyn.
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.
The rejection of Ethiopian-Israelis’ Jewish identities is antithetical to Israeli thinking of the past 40 years, including that of Israel’s leading rabbis.
