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Israeli Man Sets Self on Fire During Protest

An Israeli man set himself on fire Saturday during a Tel Aviv demonstration marking the anniversary of last summer’s social protests.

As thousands marched down Kaplan street in Tel Aviv to mark one year since the start of social protests, one of the protesters, a 52-year-old man, poured gasoline on his body and set himself on fire. The man was evacuated to Ichilov Hospital shortly afterward.

In a letter he left at the scene, he wrote that, “The state of Israel stole from me and robbed me. It left me helpless.”

“Two Housing and Construction Ministry committees rejected me, even though I had a stroke,” he wrote in the letter said, saying that the facts could be checked with a public housing company in Haifa.

In the letter, he said that he blames “the state of Israel, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Finance Minister Yuval Steinitz, for the humiliation that the weakened citizens go through every day, taking from the poor and giving to the rich.”

For more, go to Haaretz.com

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