Tel Aviv police accused of unprovoked beating of Arab Israeli

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 cited the Arab worker's employer, Kobi Cohen, as saying that he was an Israeli citizen, a Bedouin.

"He was beaten only because he's a Muslim," Super Yuda owner Cohen told Walla News. "His only crime was that he's not Jewish."

Cohen told Israeli newspaper Haaretz that the original assailants were joined by plainclothes policemen and that there were as many as 10 people beating the worker.

The incident occurred in a crowded area in front of supermarket customers and many onlookers, Haaretz said. After the beating, the worker was taken to Tel Aviv division police headquarters.

"All the neighbourhood knows him and knows that he's a good guy who isn't looking for trouble," the assaulted youth's father told Haaretz.

"Attacking him brutally, and by cops, says everything about the atmosphere in Israel now, and for that I thank the prime minister and the public security minister," he added sarcastically.

He said he is considering whether to file a complaint with the relevant authorities. "What's important for me now is my son's physical and mental health," he said. "But after the entire country saw the video I don't think the police need to wait for my complaint. They should check this on their own and make those cops and thugs who attacked him pay."

A police statement said that details would be passed as a matter of routine to the justice ministry department that handles 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."