JERUSALEM (AP) – The killing of an Eritrean man who was shot by a security guard and then beaten by an Israeli mob that mistook him for an Arab attacker has prompted soul-searching in Israel and raised concerns about racism and vigilantism amid a wave of Israeli-Palestinian violence.
Haptom Zerhom, who was in his late 20s, was killed during a deadly attack in a bus station in the southern town of Beersheba by an Arab armed with a gun and a knife, who killed an Israeli soldier and wounded nine people before being shot dead by police. It was among the bloodiest of a series of Palestinian attacks over the last month.
The seemingly random violence has put Israelis on edge, but has also raised concerns about revenge attacks.
The targeting of Zerhom, along with previous attacks on Arabs and at least one dark-skinned Jew mistaken for an Arab, have injected race into the discussion. “Just because of his skin color,” was a headline in Israel’s daily Yediot Ahronot. Some other reactions to the killing:
“We are in the midst of a continuous struggle, I think it’s obvious that we win it but this sometimes causes friction between civilians and the centers of the attacks. People at the scene of these incidents should evacuate the area and allow security and rescue services to work. We are a state of the law, no one should take the law into their own hands” – Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.