Maysam Abu El-Quiam, an Arab employee of the supermarket “Super Yuda” located on the main thoroughfare of Ibn Gvirol Street, opposite Tel Aviv’s Rabin Square, was reportedly beaten by plainclothes Border Police officers on Sunday afternoon, May 22. According to several eyewitnesses, the motive behind the beating was the employee’s ethnicity.

A demonstration against racism, in front of “Super Yuda” supermarket on Sunday night, May 22 (Photo: Hadash)

One of the eyewitnesses, Erez Krispin, wrote in a Facebook status message: “[It was] the kind of beating you never see in real life. Teeth were flying; the Arab is beaten to a pulp. An elderly woman asks them what they are doing and they yell at her to fuck off before they finish her off as well (while witnesses are standing around), the police arrive and join in on the beating. Everything, including cursing at the elderly woman, takes place while bystanders are watching. I have no idea if the Arab man is alive. They pushed whatever was left of him into the police car, not an ambulance, and disappeared. Later on it emerged that the two men were Border Police officers (who never identified themselves, of course).”

Another witness, Saguy Green, wrote in a Facebook post that dozens of plainclothes and riot police descended on the man, “a worker at the Yuda Supermarket.” Green’s post, which includes a picture of officers pinning down the man, quoted another employee at the supermarket who said that the man was beaten because he didn’t show the police his ID

Joint List Chairman, MK Ayman Odeh (Hadash) responded to the incident, saying that “Instead of serving and protecting Arab citizens, the police present a genuine danger to their safety.” Hadash MK Dov Khenin, also of the Joint List and Tel-Aviv resident, said he has turned to the Minister of Public Security with an urgent request to clarify what happened. Khenin said, “from the looks of it, this appears to be an unprovoked assault in broad daylight, an assault on an innocent citizen by police, just because he’s an Arab.”

“I have conveyed an urgent message to the Minister of Public Security demanding answers for what appears, on the face of it, to have been an unwarrented violent physical attack,” Khenin said in a statement. He accuses politicians of emitting a “foul wind of racism” that stokes “an intolerable reality of violence.” Khenin has singled out Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for criticism over allegedly racist comments during the 2015 elections, and adds, “When the government incites, there are those who are incited.”