About 2,000 Israeli citizens of Ethiopian descent marched in the Israeli town of Kiryat Malachi Jan. 9, protesting a television report that tenants associations there had signed a pledge not to rent or sell to Ethiopians.

“Finally the time has come for everyone to speak out against this,” Oshrat Masala, a local Ethiopian resident, told the Jersualem Post.

“The authorities are always telling us to be patient, that [immigrant absorption] is a process, but we are seeing that even in the next generation things are the same,” Elias Inbram, a protest organizer told the paper. “We have been living in this country for more than 30 years …we have served in the army, how much longer do we have to wait?”

Some Arab citizens of Israel joined the protest. “Racism harms us all, and it is impossible to separate the discrimination of Ethiopians in Israel from the discrimination of Arab residents or Russian-speakers,” Rabia Elsagir, a member of the Coalition Against Racism in Israel, told Haaretz.

More than 20 percent of Israeli citizens are Palestinian Arabs; less than 2 percent are from Ethiopia.

—SETH GALINSKY