Hundreds of Arabs and Jewish activists marched in the coastal city of Jaffa last Saturday, September 16, to protest the excessive and racist use of force by the Israeli police against Arab residents “in particular in Jaffa,” according to participants. At the end of July of this year, police fatally shot Mahdi al-Saadi, 22, who was from the historic Saraya center in Jaffa. The demonstration made its way through the streets of the city from al-Saadi’s home until it reached the local precinct of the Israel Police.

MK Khenin in front of the Jaffa police precinct during the last Saturday’s demonstration against police violence (Photo: Zu Haderech Communist weekly)

Also participating in the demonstration were Arab families from other locales, members of which have recently been shot to death by Israeli police, such as the family of Mohammed Taha from Kafr Qasim in the center of the country and that of the school teacher Ya’qub Abu al-Qai’an from the Arab-Bedouin village of Umm al-Hiran in the Negev. They noted that “since 2000, Israeli police have killed 58 Arab youths, without a single policeman being brought to trial.” The protesters chanted slogans demanding that police be held accountable and described law enforcers as “murderers.” The demonstrators carried placards in Arabic, English and Hebrew bearing angry indictments of the police and the far-right Israeli government

Communist and Tel-Aviv resident MK Dov Khenin (Hadash-Joint List) took part in Saturday’s demonstration in Jaffa. According to Khenin, al-Maadi “was unarmed and didn’t pose a threat when he was shot dead by police.” Khenin said “The police violence against civilians crosses numerous red lines, in particular when it comes to Arabs, Ethiopian immigrants and residents of the outlying regions of the country. We are demonstrating so that there will be a police force here that protects the civilians and doesn’t harm them.”

“We will not allow the recurrence of such incidents, and we will not wait for the next victim,” said Attorney Amir Badran from Hadash, a member of the Tel Aviv-Jaffa municipal council. “The policeman who was responsible for the murder must be tried, punished and imprisoned. We have organized these protests in the hope that the public in Israel will pressure the authorities to open a real investigation into the systematic killing of Arab citizens, and not what we have seen until now, which is just the formation of sham committees, whose mission it is to cover up police crimes.”

“It is unreasonable for Israel to boast throughout the world about its democracy and to refer to itself as the only democracy in the Middle East. It treats minorities with unfair discrimination. Not only Arabs suffer victim-hood at the hands of the police, but all minorities, some of whom are Jewish. We do not see this violence directed at other communities, such as settlers, whom the police handle with kid gloves,” Badran added.

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