Breaking News: Israel's Ethiopian Jews Protest Against Police Brutality.

Protesters at the entrance to the Tel Aviv City Hall in Rabin Square., May 3, 2015. Photos by Tomer Appelbaum

Hundreds of Israeli Jews of Ethiopian origin have staged a protest in Tel Aviv, on Sunday, triggered by a video clip that showed policemen shoving and punching a black soldier.

"There is no white. There is no black. There are just people," the demonstrators chanted on Sunday as they marched onto the Ayalon highway.

Scores of other Israelis also joined Sunday's rally, chanting and bearing signs reading: "A violent policeman must be put in prison" and "We demand full equal rights".

The protest was peaceful when it started but it later turned violent.

Tensions rose after an incident a week ago in a Tel Aviv suburb where a closed circuit video camera captured a scuffle between a policeman and a uniformed soldier of Ethiopian descent. Demonstrations followed in Jerusalem and other cities.

Two policemen were suspended on suspicion of using excessive force. Israeli politicians, stung by community leaders' comparison of the incident to police violence against blacks in the United States, scrambled to defuse tensions.

Tens of thousands of Ethiopian Jews were airlifted to Israel in dramatic, top-secret operations in the 1980s and 1990s after a rabbinical ruling that they were direct descendants of the biblical Jewish Dan tribe.