Reuven Rivlin on Thursday
Photo: Elad Gershgoren
President supports police commissioner
Commenting on Roni Alsheikh's controversial statements regarding the Ethiopian community, Reuven Rivlin has tried to interpret the commissioner's intentions: 'We apparently didn't integrate this ethnic group properly.'
President Reuven Rivlin expressed his support on Thursday for Police Commissioner Roni Alsheikh following the latter's controversial statements of Tuesday.
During an Israel Bar Association conference, Alsheikh told listeners that it was “natural” for police to suspect someone of Ethiopian descent more than somebody from a different ethnic background.
Reuven Rivlin at the school (Photo: Elad Gershgoren)
Speaking from a school in Kiryat Motzkin that he was visiting, Rivlin commented, "What the commissioner said is the same thing that I said on Jerusalem Day, at the Jerusalem festival of immigrants from Ethiopian Jewry: We apparently didn't integrate this ethnic group properly."
Rivlin said that he met Alsheikh once and understood from him that he attached great importance to integrating Ethiopian Jews. "He meant well," said the president. "He really tried to address the trend that's caused as a result of some reason or another that objectively he tried to analyze and he said, 'We're obligated today to understand that this thing must be…extracted from the root.'"
