Society's Child

Israel: Off-duty cop shoots and kills unarmed black Ethiopian Jewish teen UPDATE

Robert Inlakesh
21st Century Wire
Mon, 01 Jul 2019 00:00 UTC

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 broken 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 emphasis 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 egregious 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 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.

About the 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.

Comment:
Update 3/7/2019, 08:11, from RT:

Israel sees violent protests after Police kill Ethiopian teen

© Reuters/Corinna KernCar burns as part of a protest over death of Solomon Tekah.
Some 47 police officers were injured and 60 people arrested after a spate of protests across Israel over the shooting dead of 18-year-old Ethiopian-descendant Solomon Teka. Protesters erected burning barricades and clashed with police in the northern city of Haifa on Monday and Tuesday following Teka's death in Kiryat Haim late on Sunday.

Crowds of Ethiopian Israelis blocked junctions across the country after an off-duty police officer reportedly shot the teenager dead. The cop has been placed under house arrest and an investigation into the shooting is underway.

"It's not 'killing', it's murder," Teka's cousin, Amir, said in a radio interview on Tuesday, as cited by Al Jazeera. "It cannot be that a person is next to his home and gets murdered and they say 'killed.' What was it? A work accident? Was he hit by a car?"

© REUTERS/Ronen ZvulunRelatives and friends of Solomon Teka attend his funeral in Haifa, Israel July 2, 2019
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu published a video response to the violent clashes late on Tuesday, saying that "everyone was mourning the tragic death of Solomon Teka," while beseeching the crowds not to escalate further. "I ask you, let's solve the problems together while adhering to the law."

© REUTERS/ Corinna KernCrowd confronts police
The Ethiopian Jewish community numbers around 140,000, including more than 50,000 expats. They have complained of systemic harassment and racism since forming in Israel in the 1980s and 1990s after an in an influx of Jews from elsewhere in the world.

Reader Comments

Evster · 2019-07-02T23:20:57Z

According to the Talmud, blacks are below goyim and not fully human, lacking a soul, and barely worthy of being slaves to Jews.

Don’t blame me, I didn’t write the damned thing. If you don’t believe me, read Israel Shahak. It’s in there with zero ambiguity.

Evster · 2019-07-02T23:29:42Z

To be clear, to the orthodox, there’s no such thing as a black Jew. The Halakah clearly states that blacks and/or goyim cannot be or convert to being Jewish. Those “permissions” are to avoid the spread of hostility towards Jews”.

miggle · 2019-07-03T09:03:43Z

Evster Okay, but you're not saying black Jews are not Jews. Look at the fact that post-Alexander, rabbis were proselytizing all over the Greek-speaking world including Ethiopia. Every few decades they were expelled from Rome for causing social turmoil with the aggressiveness of that proselyting. On the record, just for Rome, in 139BC, AD19, AD49 expulsions, and that's only one city and a few scraps of records. It was happening in all cities across North Africa, across Europe, across Asia as far as the Indus Valley, for centuries. See the Wikipedia article "Claudius' expulsion of Jews from Rome" last edited on 15 May 2019, at 19:17 (UTC), just for starters. Add to that that Jesus condemns the Pharisees for encompassing land and sea to make a single proselyte, who then sinks into their self-serving "tradition" demands.

miggle · 2019-07-03T09:15:46Z

Evster The Halakah is talmudic, a late arbitrary invention, when the whole known world had been Greek-speaking for centuries before it was written, with proselytizing rabbis running all over that huge reason. That the Halakah or Maimonides want to claim that blacks are subhuman proves them fake, does not prove there are no black Jews.

miggle · 2019-07-03T09:18:49Z

miggle ... running all over that huge region, I meant.

Evster · 2019-07-03T13:33:06Z

I wasn’t saying there are no black Jews, nor was I trying to delegitimize them. I was adding to the thrust of the article, not taking away from it..

Evster · 2019-07-03T13:37:59Z

You’re correct though, I’m not saying black Jews aren’t Jews. I’m not clear why your response begins with a “but”. It sounds like a counterpoint, yet we agree.

Awordinyourear · 2019-07-03T08:56:05Z

Yet the Ethiopian Jewish CAN trace their ancestors all the way back to King Soloman and King David. Including a six hundred year stay in Egypt. They had the ark of the Covenant with them.

Racism is so full of hate it's practicioners have their eyes shut. If God trusts them why not Israel.

Israel has hubris and pride putting itself in the role of God, yet with eyes shut and ears closed.

The suggestion that a 'holy land' exists anywhere has to be anathema, because in God's creation everywhere is holy. Oh and all of God's creation is sacred.

Any religion that places one ethnic group over any other is unequeviocally not of God, but man.

Dr G · 2019-07-04T04:04:23Z

FYI - I am Jewish so save your anti-semitic accusations for someone else....

As with other major components of what has been trotted out to us as world history, this is another area where far too much revisionism has been presented as fact.

The Europeans currently claiming to be Jewish either do not know or pretend not to know the origins of their religion as well as their physical origins. The fundamental tenets of Judaism and Christianity originate from Ethiopia. Their ancestors, just like the Europeans who grew the slave trade into a global business empire, took advantage of the inherent hospitality of most tribal communities throughout the African continent to learn the most intimate details about their well-established religious practices that were based almost exclusively on love and peace for all fellows of humankind.

Without corrupting European influences, Africans did not have a word for jail because they had no need for jails. Societies thrived for hundreds, and in some cases, thousands of years without the major wars and violent religiously-motivated upheavals we have witnessed during the past few hundred years. Any disputes were handled by local tribal leaders whose final decisions/judgements were respected and honored by all.

I'll be nice in stating that these Europeans 'adapted' most of those attributes and gave a new name to the religious tenets they [stole] from the Ethiopians. At the same time, as already implied in this comment thread, they proceeded to intentionally 'revise' important aspects such as claiming that Jerusalem and its surroundings are holy land and that it is supposed to be exclusively reserved for Jews and that 'G-d' identified us as his "chosen".

It is reprehensible to realize that there are persons calling themselves Jews who do not understand or refuse to acknowledge that the only one people on this planet entitled to be recognized as the mother land of Judaism, in its most pure and unadulterated form, are in fact the Ethiopians.

Africans and other persons of color are a majority on a global basis now numbering well over two billion in worldwide population. It's ludicrous to think that continuing to treat them, in the United States as well as abroad, as some sort of trashy underclass is going to end well for those who continue to abuse power in the name of paper money and religions founded on lies.

Bob A Weave · 2019-07-04T06:25:35Z

jew on jew crime, what has the world come to?

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Israel: Off-duty cop shoots and kills unarmed black Ethiopian Jewish teen UPDATE

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