Thousands demonstrated in Kiryat Malachi on Thursday in protest of local apartment owners refusing to sell or rent to Israelis of Ethiopian descent.The practice was revealed in a Channel 2 news expose last week, depicting a Kiryat Malachi neighborhood council whose residents signed a pledge vowing not to rent or sell houses to Ethiopians.You (Sephardim) claim that Askenazim are racist towards you,but you are the most racist.You signed a (racist) document.- It's a lie, it's a lie.We are welcoming to Ethiopians, do you want to buy an apartment right now?-Yes -Yes?-YesYou must accept everyone, we are all Jews.Use your head!No one here knew about the pledge, no one.Maybe it was the council, we don't know who signed it. But they (Ethiopians) are amazing people. The man's face (on the news report) was blurry,he could have been from anywhere. [Reporter:] So you are saying it never happened in this building?I'm not saying it didn't happen, I'm just saying I don't know who did it. RELATED:MK Molla to A-G: Investigate Kiryat Malachi racismIn the Channel 2 segment, one resident of the Bar-Yehuda neighborhood in the poor development town can be heard saying “the only good Ethiopian is a dead Ethiopian.” Another resident said Ethiopians “have a stench like an atomic bomb.”var ord = window.ord || Math.floor(Math.random() * 1e16);document.write('');An additional resident of the 120-family neighborhood said that Ethiopians will bring down the real estate values, before adding that he wouldn’t rent to an Ethiopian even if he was the IDF chief of staff. The same resident said Ethiopians who move into the neighborhood will start holding elaborate African rituals in public spaces, including slaughtering cattle and setting up tents “like they do there [Africa]”. Among those at the protest was Kiryat Malachi Mayor Moti Malcha, who told Army Radio that he "harshly condemned the discrimination against the Ethiopian community the moment I was informed of it." Malcha stated that the problems revealed in Kiryat Malachi were a symptom of a larger problem nationwide. "The Ethiopian community is separated and the State of Israel does almost nothing to care for them. It cannot be that I have to chase after contributions in order to take care of them," he stated.
