Robert Inlakesh
21st Century Wire

An Israeli off-duty police officer shot dead an 18 year old Ethiopian Israeli Jew, near Haifa, this Sunday sparking outrage amongst the Ethiopian Jewish population.

Demonstrators voiced their outrage this Monday after the gunning down of an unarmed black Jewish teen in the area of Kiryat Haim, near Haifa which is located in Northern Israel.

An off-duty Israeli police officer shot dead 18 year old, Soloman Tekha, claiming that the unarmed teens had put his life in danger, however, all of the eyewitnesses testified against this claim.

The officer, who has not been identified over his personal “security concerns”, was apparently detained and later released to temporary house arrest following the incident.

The claim made by the officer was that he approached an ongoing fight that had brocken out and as he approached to help, he had stones thrown at him, this was then used as the justification – being the “life threatening” circumstance – for the drawing of his weapon and fatally shooting the unarmed black teenager.

The reason why I point out the teenagers ethnicity, is to place enthuses on the fact that this incident has been interpreted as yet another incident of Israeli police violence towards black Jews in Israel. Similar protests as this Monday’s demonstration were sparked back in January when a 24 year old unarmed Ethiopian Jewish man was gunned down.

An often untouched and ugly reality in Israel, aside from its aggrevious human rights violations against the native Palestinian population, is the persecution of Ethiopian Jews by their fellow Israelis of European and even Sephardic backgrounds.

Ethiopian Jews have been referred to as second class citizens inside of Israel, despite serving in the IDF and adding the the Israeli economy the way all other citizens do.

This case is an ongoing one, as the Ethiopian Jewish community remain in outrage and are expected by authorities to likely demonstrate again, prompting Israeli authorities to warn police to keep the situation calm and not inflame it.

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Author Robert Inlakesh is a special contributor to 21WIRE and European correspondent for Press TV. He has reported from on the ground in occupied Palestine. See more of his work here.

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