Racism growing in Israel

Israel Police Commissioner Roni Alsheich on Tuesday drew widespread condemnation after he appeared to say that it was “natural” for law-enforcement officers to be more suspicious of Ethiopian Israelis than of others.

“Studies the world over, without exception, have shown that immigrants are invariably more involved in crime than others, and this should not come as a surprise,” Alsheich told a gathering of the Israel Bar Association in Tel Aviv, in response to a question about persistent accusations of police brutality and racial discrimination against Ethiopian Israelis.

Alsheich said studies have also shown that young people in general are more involved in crime and that “when the two come together, there’s a situation in which a given community is more involved than others in crime, statistically speaking.”

“When a police officer comes across a suspicious person [either young or from an immigrant background, or both], his brain suspects him more than if [the suspect] were someone else, it’s natural,” he continued, emphasizing that “over-policing is natural” when it comes to Ethiopians, due to the aforementioned statistics linking them, as members of an immigrant community, to higher crime rates.

The police chief indicated he was also thinking of Arab-Israelis who come in contact with Israeli police officers, according to Times of Israel.