Israeli police are hunting members of a group of Israelis who killed an Eritrean migrant after mistakenly identifying him as a terrorist involved in an attack at a bus station.
Haftom Zarhum was shot repeatedly by a security guard then kicked and spat at by a mob after going to the southern Israeli city of Beersheba to pick up his renewed work visa. He was walking past the central bus station with a group of friends when an Israeli Bedouin armed with a gun and knife attacked a bus, killing an Israeli soldier and injuring 10 others.
In the panic surrounding the attack, Zarhum was identified as a suspected accomplice, apparently based on his appearance. The Israeli daily newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth was among several media organisations that left no ambiguity as to why it believed he had been shot. Monday’s headline read: “Just because of his skin colour.”
In events that some Israeli media called a lynching, Zarhum was shot and wounded before being shot several more times by a security guard at the bus station as he crawled along the floor. Still alive, he was then surrounded by people who cursed and spat at him, kicked him in the head and tried to hit him with a chair.
As paramedics tried to rescue him, the crowd chanted “Death to Arabs”, “Arabs out!” and “Am Israel Hai” (“The people of Israel still live”) and tried to stop them. “It’s terrible,” said a foreign ministry spokesman, Emmanuel Nahshon, one of a number of officials to comment on the killing. “It shows you what a terrible situation we are in.”
In Beersheba on Monday, Zarhum’s Eritrean friends and co-workers were gathered on a bench not far from the bus station, including Amani Tewelde who was with him when he was killed.
“We were waiting at the bus station,” Tewelde said. “The bus was late and then someone started shooting. ‘Mila’ went one way and I went to the other side. They shot him twice. Then I saw them kicking him. Someone found his visa and was holding it shouting he’s Eritrean, he’s not a terrorist, but no one could hear him.”
Habtom Hagos said Zarhum had been in Israel three and a half years and was in Beerseheba to renew his work visa. “He was waiting for the bus to go back to the moshav where he lived and worked,” he said. “He had no gun. Why did they shoot him?”
Zarhum worked at the moshav (a cooperative agricultural community) of Ein HaBesor near the southern Gaza border. His employer described him as a modest and hardworking man who had fled Eritrea to Israel for safety.
“He was a good guy and a hard worker who lived here,” said Sagi Malchi. “It breaks my heart. I think the man was in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
Zarhum’s killing came after one of the most serious attacks in recent weeks of escalating violence and underscored a febrile and dangerous atmosphere in which there have been a number of revenge attacks on Palestinians and Israeli Arabs. One previous attempted attack in Netanya was prevented by other Israelis.
The Israeli prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, on Monday warned against vigilantism. “We’ve a country of law. No one will take the law into his own hands,” he told his party’s lawmakers in broadcast remarks on Zarhum’s death.
In the past fortnight, 41 Palestinians, including assailants and demonstrators at anti-Israeli protests, eight Israelis and one Eritrean have been killed.
The attack on Zarhum was caught on video, with one person taking part telling Army Radio: “I saw people gathering around him.” The man, only identified as Dudu, added: “I understood from the people around him he was a terrorist. If I had known I would have helped him. In a moment of fear and pressure you do things you don’t understand.
“All the people gathering around the man attacked him. Nobody was helping him. People just were making sure he doesn’t move. There is no human being who did not kick or beat him. Everyone took part. I couldn’t sleep last night thinking about what happened and I feel sick about myself.”
Another witness told the Yedioth Ahronoth website, Ynet: “People took out their rage on the wounded Eritrean and abused him. We thought he was one of the terrorists. He was shot in the legs and the real terrorist ran outside.”
As Israeli police announced an investigation into the attack on Zarhum, they said they were looking for individuals who had attacked him after he was incapacitated by the first gunshot.
His employer, Malchi, said Zarhum had worked for a year running one of his greenhouses. “In general I don’t know all my workers. I knew him and in the course of the last months we spoke a lot. He was a modest guy, very quiet, and he did his job in the best possible way.
“I was watching the news and I saw what happened and I saw an Eritrean but didn’t recognise him. What I feel is sadly familiar. It is a bad day. And I also feel bad for the family of the soldier who was killed.”
Describing those involved in the brutal attack, Malchi said: “It is a shame people in Israel have this barbaric attitude. A pity that a small group of people do this terrible service to our country.”
Condemning Zarhum’s killing, Human Rights Watch described it as “a tragic but foreseeable outgrowth of a climate in which some Israeli politicians encourage citizens to take the law into their own hands”.
Sari Bashi, the Israel-Palestine director at HRW, added: “The Israeli authorities should investigate and prosecute those responsible for the attack. Israel faces acute threats to public safety, but vigilantism will only lead to more innocent people being harmed or killed.”
The recent violence was set off in part by Palestinians’ anger over what they see as increased Jewish encroachment on Jerusalem’s al-Aqsa Mosque complex.
The US secretary of state, John Kerry, who is due to hold separate meetings this week with Israeli and Palestinian leaders, said on Monday it was vital to clarify the status around the compound, also revered by Jews as the location of two destroyed biblical temples.
“I don’t have specific expectations except to try to move things forward, and that will depend on the conversations themselves,” Kerry told reporters in Madrid.
Netanyahu has said he seeks no change to the decades-old status quo in which Israel bans Jewish prayer at the al-Aqsa site in the walled old city of East Jerusalem, captured along with the West Bank in a 1967 war.
