President Rivlin Addressed The Following Remarks To The Ethiopian Community This Evening

By BJLife Israel Newsroom
Posted on 07/02/19

"Sisters and brothers, fellow citizens of Israel, including our brothers and sisters from the Ethiopian community. These are very difficult days. Solomon Teka, who has lost his life, is in all of our thoughts, and the questions are difficult and agonizing.

We must stop, I repeat, stop - and think together how we go on from here. None of us have blood that is thicker than anyone else’s, and the lives of our brothers and sisters will never be forfeit. We must allow the investigation into Solomon's death to run its course, and we must prevent the next death. The next attack. The next humiliation. We are all committed to this.

We are brothers and sisiters. We came here, all of us, to our homeland, which is home for every one of us, and we are all equal in it. We will fight for our values and we will fight to ensure a safe future for every child that grows up here. We will not accept a situation in which parents are afraid to let their children out of the house for fear of being hurt because of the color of their skin or their ethnic origin. This is not a civil war. It is a shared struggle of brothers and sisters for their shared home and their shared future. I am amazed by the young men and women of the community, whom I meet time and time again. They are the best of our sons and daughters.

I ask of all of us to act responsibly and with moderation. I know that you are doing everything in your power to convey the voice of your protest and to lead a change that is all about righting wrongs and creating a better future. No one wants revenge. The agitation comes from a deep rift and a great prayer for making things better. We are all partners, we must all be partners in this process. We have no other choice. We have no other home.

We must be very careful about the escalation of protest so that it does not spill over into violence, for which there is no place. I call upon all of us, from within the rift, to choose restraint and moderation. The rage must not be expressed violently. The handful of protesters who have chosen violence are not the true face of this protest, and it must not become the face of this protest which we all understand so well.

My home is your home. Let us sit together with all the bodies responsible for the safety of Israeli citizens. Only like this, in open conversation, however harsh, will we achieve change. Let us continue to stand together like a wall against violence, any form of violence, and to fight together for our shared home, for our children and for our future."