Israel’s lords of irresponsibility don’t care about the welfare of Arab citizens
The scene of a car explosion in Ramle, September 2024
The lead editorial in Haaretz on 16 April 2025:
The mood in Israel’s Arab community is heavy with fear and dread. Last week, over the course of 24 hours, three men were shot dead, in Tira, Sakhnin and Nazareth. The cycle of violent crime never ends: shots are fired at people, homes and stores; vehicles are blown up; businesses and families are threatened. Headlines from the past few days tell the story: “Man killed in car explosion in Arabeh,” “Man, 60, shot to death in Shfaram,” “Two brothers shot dead in Ramle’s Juarish neighborhood,” “Man, 35, shot to death in Reineh.”
In Arabeh, for instance, 11 people have been killed since the start of 2024, compared to just four in the previous five years. The residents, who can’t understand why organized crime has reached them after so many years of quiet, hide in their homes and blame the law enforcement agencies. The general feeling is that anyone could be killed at any moment without the criminal ever being brought to trial.
By Haaretz’s count, 73 Israeli Arab citizens have been killed in the year to date, a significant increase from previous years. By comparison, there were 49 homicides in Arab communities in the parallel period last year. Moreover, the proportion of homicides in the Arab community that are solved has been minuscule in recent years, just 15 percent in 2024. The clearance rate for 2023 was similar.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s decision to appoint Itamar Ben-Gvir as the minister in charge of the police, and hence of Arab Israelis’ safety, was the first step in the process of abandoning one-fifth of Israel’s citizens and turning the government’s back on them. This appointment made it clear that Netanyahu and his government had no intention of addressing the rising crime in the Arab community. On the contrary, they are allowing it to continue and even worsen.
These masters of abandonment, Ben-Gvir and Netanyahu, don’t even have the courage to look families hurt by crime and violence in the face. This is especially outrageous when one recalls that under the previous so-called government of change, a genuine intention of trying to stop this crime wave was evident. The minister in charge of the police in that government, Omer Bar-Lev, met in 2021 with Arab women whose children were victims of homicide. His deputy, Yoav Segalovitz, visited Arab towns, met with people from the Arab community, listened to them and crafted a plan to combat the problem.
But instead of providing an effective response that would help the Arab community, Ben-Gvir and Police Commissioner Danny Levy have abandoned more than 20 percent of the country’s citizens. A prime minister who was interested in fixing this injustice to the Arab community would have fired Ben-Gvir, replaced him with a national security minister who cared about the welfare of Israel’s Arab citizens and increased the budget for dealing with this problem. But Netanyahu isn’t interested in fixing anything; he is only interested in destroying. All that matters to him is that he be assured of remaining in power.
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