For Israel’s Chief of Police, Ronnie Alsheikh, notions of civil and human rights and the equality of people, regardless of the color of their skin or their gender, are located somewhere out there in the periphery. He’s doubtless heard that people use these terms, but apparently hasn’t internalized that they are fundamental to democracy and to his work as commander of the police.

Even before Alsheikh came to his current job, police work has been characterized by racism, prejudice and misogyny. But Alsheikh brought to his new position what he had learned during 27 years of experience with the Shabak (the Israel Security Agency). And in that branch of work, as we know, there’s no connection to human rights.

Ethiopian demonstration against police violence – Jerusalem, April 2015 (Photo: ActiveStills)

Police Chief Alsheikh has academic degrees, but that didn’t prevent him from publicly expressing himself as the last of the racists at the end of last month. At a conference of the Israel Bar Association (29.8), Alsheikh established that minority communities are “characterized by excessive crime” and also linked this with phenomena characteristic of immigration. In a conversation he held the next day with the CEO with the Association for Ethiopian Jews, Alsheikh added an historical explanation – “We’ve forgotten what we went through here with the Yemenites, what we went through here with the Moroccans.” And, of course [our addition] “what we’re going through now with the Ethiopians.”

About one issue Alsheikh is right: Discrimination against Ethiopian immigrants is another link in the chain of discrimination that has accompanied the Zionist movement and the praxis of the State of Israel from the start.

By means of the military government, most lands belonging to Arabs were stolen from then because they were Arabs. Arab citizens were imprisoned or exiled from their communities because of statements and political activities that the political establishment of Mapai didn’t like. The Arabs weren’t immigrants, but they were perceived as as a “security threat.”

In the 1950s and 60s the Israeli establishment adopted the notion that the learning capabilities of children born to Oriental Jews was limited, and so a simplified curriculum was drawn up for them to prepare them for menial work.

The desire to discipline the Arabs and Mizrahim so that they’d accept with understanding their discrimination and oppression led to the brutal trampling of any expressions of resistance or civil disobedience. We remember the violent attacks by police on demonstrations of the Black Panthers in the early 1970s and how in 2000 police shot and killed 13 Arab demonstrators. Since 2000, police have killed 51 Arab citizens and 2 Jewish ones.

But the issue is not just “ancient history.” In May 2015 police officers went wild when  young Ethiopian Jews demonstrated in Tel Aviv against police violence and against what is termed “excessive arrests” of Ethiopian youth.

One of the manifestation of discrimination has been and remains the ease with which police handcuff and arrest young members of the communities considered “suspicious” and with which it subsequently imprisons them. According to the latest data, Arabs minors are imprisoned 2.5 times higher than their proportion in the population, and Ethiopians minors 2 times more.

Discrimination and oppression were and remain essential elements in Israeli society which suffers from chauvinism towards Arabs citizens and discrimination towards Mizrahi and Ethiopian citizens (not to mention African refugees). When budgets are allocated to Arab schools per pupil are only half of that for Jewish kids – this is a way to perpetuate the discrimination.

Chief of Police Alsheikh has suggested that the recruitment of Ethiopian police officers may be a solution to the police harassment of the community’s young people. But does the fact Alsheikh is the son of a Yemenite/Moroccan family put an end to the discrimination of Oriental Jews? And will recruiting Arabs to the police end racism?

After Alsheikh infamously established that (1) anonymous complaints of sexual harassment by police officers will not be accepted, and now (2) that it’s only natural for a policeman to be more suspicious of a person with darker skin — the time has come to fire Police Commissioner Alsheikh.

This article was publish in a recent issue of Zo HaDerech, the weekly Hebrew-language paper of the CPI.