Report: Ethiopians, Arabs face most racism in Israel

Racism complaints filed in the past year by Israel’s Justice Ministry related mostly to alleged discrimination by Israelis of Ethiopians and Arabs, according to a report by the agency issued on Sunday.

The most common complaint was discrimination when being serviced, Haaretz reported.

According to the report, 24 percent of the cases involved racism directed at Ethiopians, 24 percent against Arabs, and 10 percent against ultra-Orthodox Jews.

Four percent of complaints involved Mizrahi Jews of Middle Eastern origin. 

In 2021, 458 cases were opened on complaints of racism and discrimination, a slight decrease from previous years (497 in 2019, 506 in 2020).

Haaretz noted that the data refers only to complaints received by the Justice Ministry, which is not necessarily a complete reflection of Israel’s reality.

The analysis broke down the cases by subject: 

- Providing a service - 23%

- Hiring and employment - 11%

- Racist expressions in public - 10%

- Racist or stereotypical advertising - 9%

- Racist speech in public - 7%

- Police treatment - 7%

- Educational issues - 4%

- Racially-motivated crimes - 3%

In one case, a young man of Ethiopian descent, Yuval Makuria, was regularly discriminated against at a supermarket, of which the Justice Ministry sued on behalf of Makuria and won $23,000 in damages.

Another case involved two Druze couples who were humiliated and degraded in security checks by an Israeli airline officer in South Africa, Haaretz reported.

The report also cited an incident of racially motivated conduct by Israeli police officers during a bus inspection - while enforcing Covid restrictions in January 2021, police gave tickets for not wearing seatbelts to all the Arab passengers but none of the Jewish ones.

Upon review, the tickets were canceled, and the actions were ordered to be viewed as police misconduct.