Israel Hayom reports significant disturbances of the peace during protests over the death of 4-year-old Refael Adana, a boy from Israel's Ethiopian community who was struck and killed in a traffic accident.
On Wednesday evening, police blocked the Ayalon Highway's southbound lanes to allow for the protest. The protesters would later make their way to the northbound lanes as well. Firebombs, stones, and bonfires were used by the protesters. Six police officers were injured, one of whom required surgery.
Police responded to the protest with flashbangs and mounted officers. Four protesters were arrested over the course of the evening.
The father of the late Salomon Taka, who was shot by police, spoke at the protest and said: "We are in pain for the 4-year-old Refael Adana. Our condolences to his parents for their tragic loss. Four years ago Salomon was murdered - until today we are waiting and the story is not over. The woman who hurt Refael, if she had called an ambulance, if she had behaved like a human being - we wouldn't be here. We came to the demonstration because it hurts us, we have no desire to demonstrate. They look at us as criminals, but we are not."
MK Tsega Melaku (Likud) said: "When I look at what has been happening to us for more than four decades - when I immigrated as a girl, there was a difficulty with the language. The first time I understood the difficulty was when I had children, my first son reached the first grade and I wanted to enroll him in a school near the house and they said there is no room, but then I saw in the newspaper that they are still looking for students. Apparently they just don't accept people from Ethiopia. Then I realized that the problem is not my culture but theirs!"
"We donated blood and they threw it in the trash. We organized a demonstration. If it doesn't end in my generation - my children were already born here and it didn't end in their generation, and now it's happening to the third generation as well. The problem is not individual people, the problem is institutionalized racism. We didn't come here because we felt like it, we didn't come because we were hungry, we came because we wanted Jerusalem."
At the beginning of the week, the family members met with the prosecution to check whether camera footage near the scene of the fatal accident had been seized or checked. Evidence of tire tracks on the curb indicates, according to the family, that the woman driving lost control.
Although this has already been checked by the police, and relevant camera footage was seized in the area of the accident, in light of the family's claim to the existence of additional cameras at the scene, the Prosecutor's Office ordered the police to do another inspection of the scene of the accident.