The police stopped releasing enforcement data in 2023 — which is why what everyone sees is hard to prove

What happened in the Knesset in January

On 6 January 2026 Efrat Forcher reported in Walla on a special Knesset committee hearing, convened at the initiative of MK Pnina Tamano-Shata, at which parents testified about how police treated their children. Among the testimonies reported: a mother who said her son, a disabled IDF veteran, was beaten by officers and remained in custody; a parent who described a 12-year-old who "is afraid to leave home"; a father who described officers drawing weapons during his son's arrest over a scooter that belonged to the boy; and a 30-year-old man who described being tasered while handcuffed, after coming in to file a complaint.

Per that report, police spokesperson Arieh Doron pointed in response to the dedicated community-relations unit and to police support for the records-expungement legislation. Tamano-Shata said at the hearing that she briefs her own child, from age seven, every time he leaves the house.

What the June investigation found

On 19 June 2026 Gai Asif published an investigation in Ynet into police enforcement against Ethiopian-Israelis. Two findings from it:

The police have released no enforcement data since 2023. A figure at the Knesset Research and Information Center is quoted in the piece as saying no answers had been received from the police for months.
Of the data the piece did present: Ethiopian-Israelis are around 2.2% of Israel's Jewish population but around 9% of all youth arrests; and more than 50% of investigation files opened against Ethiopian-Israelis were closed for insufficient evidence — about 5% higher than the rate in the general Jewish population.

In the response published in the piece, the National Security Ministry listed achievements under Minister Itamar Ben Gvir, among them the July 2024 records-deletion law, the recruitment of 170 Ethiopian-Israeli officers in 2024 against 46 in 2021, and the establishment of a dedicated community-policing unit. The police said they firmly reject any biased portrayal, and pointed to training and community programmes run since 2021.

The last official figure

When a system stops publishing, what is left is the last publication. That is the Knesset Research and Information Center paper "Enforcement data concerning Ethiopian-Israelis, 2019–2023", by Dr Nurit Yachimovich-Cohen, dated 21 May 2024. It was prepared at the request of MK Tsega Melaku, as background for the Constitution Committee's debate on the records-deletion bill.

What it says, in each of the years 2019–2023:

Ethiopian-Israelis are 2.2% of all Jews in Israel.
Their share of all Jewish detainees: 8%–9%.
Their share of arrests for "contact offences" (assaulting an officer, aggravated assault of an officer, obstructing an officer): 10%–12%.
Their share of suspects across all investigation files: 5%–6%; in contact-offence files: 9%–11%.

The paper itself notes that the published version replaces an earlier one, and that some contact-offence data were removed from it "following the identification of an error in the data transmitted by the police".

Why this matters beyond the numbers

Two and a half years without fresh data is not only a research problem. It decides who carries the burden of proof. Without an updated data series, every complaint reverts to being a personal story against an institutional denial — which is exactly the structure in which a parent's testimony at a committee sounds like emotion, and a spokesperson's response sounds like fact.

What to do in a street stop

You are entitled to ask what you are being detained for. We set out the rights and the exact wording in our street-stop guide.
To complain about an officer's conduct, the routes and addresses are gathered in our guide to dealing with police.
If a file was opened against you in the past for public-order offences, it may have been deleted by the 2024 law. Check on our criminal-record deletion page.

> This is general information and not legal advice. In a specific case, consult a lawyer or legal aid.