Tel Aviv police accused of unprovoked beating of Arab Israeli

JERUSALEM – Israeli media on Sunday published amateur video appearing to show an Arab supermarket worker being savagely beaten by policemen in Tel Aviv and witness accounts saying the attack was unprovoked.

"I've never seen anything like it. [His] teeth were flying through the air. The Arab was torn apart," onlooker Erez Krispin posted on Facebook.

He said the employee of a city-centre supermarket was outside the store putting out rubbish when a man in civilian clothes, who did not identify himself, demanded to see his ID.

Krispin said the worker began to explain that his documents were inside and to ask who the questioner was.

"He barely finished speaking and started to get murderous blows from the man and a friend who was with him," he wrote.

Video posted on several news websites showed two men in civilian dress punching and kicking a third, but their identities were indistinct.

Private TV station Channel Two quoted the Arab worker's employer, Kobi Cohen, as saying that he was an Israeli citizen, a Bedouin.

"The police acted like a gang and beat him only because he was an Arab," Cohen said.

A police statement said that details would be passed as a matter of routine to the justice ministry department which inspects allegations against police.

"It emerges from the initial investigation that border police officers identified a young man who they thought suspicious and asked him to identify himself. The suspect refused to identify himself and attacked the policemen, one of whom was bitten," it said.

"The policemen were obliged to use force in order to arrest the suspect, who continued attacking them violently. As a result of the violence of the attack, two policemen were taken to... hospital suffering from bruises and bites."