A Palestinian ticket inspector was attacked twice. Now every Haredi looks like a threat
Gideon Levy reports in Haaretz on 19 September 2026:
One arm in a cast, an eye swollen and partly stitched up. This is the fate of a Palestinian ticket inspector from East Jerusalem who had the audacity to check the tickets of Jewish passengers on a bus line that plies the route between the settlement of Givat Ze’ev and Jerusalem.
He’s been attacked twice this year; both of his arms were broken in addition to the injury to his eye. After the first assault he agonized about whether to quit, but decided to stay on the job, thinking it was perhaps a one-time occurrence. After the second attack, however, he decided to stop working on buses. He’s simply too scared. In fact, he says now, he’s even afraid when he passes Jews on the street.
He’s not alone, it turns out: At least two other ticket inspectors have been assaulted since his latest incident. Moreover, a great number of Arab bus drivers have been attacked in Jerusalem since October 7. All restraints have apparently been lifted now – not only in the West Bank, but in violent circles in the city as well.
The pummeling endured by drivers of public transport who serve Jewish passengers may not be the most severe affliction of the occupation, but it’s certainly one of the most outrageous. It occurs in the public domain and is the sole outcome of racism. You can’t invent any other excuse for it – neither security nor any other imagined danger – and it has become completely normalized.
Consider what would happen if Jewish bus drivers in Europe were attacked today simply because they are Jews. What an uproar would ensue! After all, Jewish bus drivers were attacked in the not-so-distant past. Time and again it’s astonishing to discover how the historical context and the collective memory have been obliterated here.
In the present atmosphere in Israel, and particularly in Jerusalem, the capital of racism, Palestinian bus drivers, taxi drivers and bus inspectors have been forced to realize that they are working in dangerous and humiliating jobs. Their body and their dignity have become expendable.
Shadi Kara’in is a 40-year-old resident of Silwan, a village that abuts the Old City. He and his wife live on an upper floor of a narrow building; their tiny apartment is accessed by a cramped metal stairway. Their home is filled with decorations. The songbird in a small cage can be seen as metaphor for the living quarters in densely populated Silwan, hemmed in by numerous settlers and Israeli flags. The little mirror hanging in the living room is in the shape of the state of Palestine, from the river to the sea. The biggest and most dominant thing in the room is the television screen.
After graduating high school in Silwan, Kara’in took a course to be an electrical technician at a vocational school in Atarot, an industrial zone in northern Jerusalem. He worked initially for two and a half years installing surveillance cameras and then in construction for about 15 years.
A year and a half ago he decided to switch professions and started work as an inspector for the local Derech Egged bus company. He was assigned to predominantly settler-oriented routes, Nos. 134, 131 and 132, which carry passengers from Givat Ze’ev – the fourth-largest settlement in the West Bank – to Jerusalem, and back. He also worked on buses traveling between Givat Ze’ev and the ultra-Orthodox city of Bnei Brak, near Tel Aviv.
Every day, from 3 P.M. until midnight, he would board crowded buses alone in order to check if the passengers had indeed validated their pre-loaded Rav Kav smart cards; he would then get off at a stop and wait for the next bus to come. If needed, he would fine people who didn’t validate their card. Part of the job, you know.
Nearly all the passengers on the routes he worked were Jews, the vast majority Haredim or national-religious settlers; only occasionally would there be Palestinians from the area, who worked in settlements.
The first months of Inspector Kara’in’s work were uneventful. Then he was attacked, for the first time, on January 15. It was 4 P.M. and the bus was packed. The No. 404 runs from Jerusalem to Bnei Brak and passes through Givat Ze’ev. Kara’in says he worked his way down the bus as usual, checking all the passengers, until he got to the back.
“Please give me your Rav Kav to be checked,” he told one of the last passengers, a man wearing a kippa who said he didn’t have a card. Kara’in told him he couldn’t travel without it and asked for his ID. Then all hell broke loose.
“You Arabs get out of here! I’m not showing a Rav Kav or an ID card to an Arab. Jews get on whenever they want and do whatever they want,” the man retorted.
Kara’in asked the driver to stop the bus and to summon the police, according to standard procedure. Another passenger offered to pay for the man with his card, so the problem was apparently solved. Just then another inspector got on and the driver told him a passenger was making trouble.
“Garbage Arab,” the recalcitrant passenger shouted, and then jumped on Kara’in, raining blows upon him from behind.
The police arrived. Kara’in was taken to a hospital. Both arms were broken and in casts for three months. He went back to work in May. Time passed. On August 26, at 9:30 P.M., he was working on the No. 134 bus to Givat Ze’ev, which was packed. Kara’in did his job asking for the transit cards. A Haredi man replied, “I don’t have one,” and added, “You are terrorist Arabs.” Kara’in won’t quote everything the man said now, making do with, “He did not speak nicely.”
Again he went to the driver, a Palestinian, and asked him to stop and call the police, but as the driver pulled into a nearby gas station, the passenger lunged and grabbed his arm, managed to press the button to open the door, and fled. “Okay, if he got away, he got away,” Kara’in remembers saying to himself. Bus inspectors wear body cameras and he knew the man had been photographed.
Kara’in got off the bus, to try to calm down, when suddenly the same passenger appeared with three other yeshiva students
and started to curse and pummel him. One punched him in the left eye, another kicked him. He reached for his phone to call the police and accidentally turned on the camera. The next five minutes are documented.
It’s dark out. The men can be seen beating the inspector all over and hurling curses at him. He tries to flee; his heavy breathing is audible. They knock him to the ground. There’s a siren in the background, apparently that of an approaching police car. The footage also shows one of the Haredim picking something up and putting it in his pocket.
Meanwhile, an Arab truck driver who is passing by stops and tries to help Kara’in, who can be heard groaning in pain. The bearded men in the brimmed hats and black suits stand over him. Apparently being drafted is not for them, but beating up Arabs is something they can do. If they’d been wearing an army uniform they could do the same thing and probably spare themselves the wrath of the secular population.
“You dog,” they shout. “We’re human beings – humans,” Kara’in says. “You son of a bitch, who do you think you are?” they shout. Kara’in, distraught, tries to tell the police officer who arrived in the meantime what happened. “They kicked me,” he says. “Inspector-dog,” the assailants yell as Kara’in shows the officer his injuries. The truck driver can be overheard saying, “He could die. What will you do about it?”
Kara’in was taken to Shaare Zedek Medical Center in Jerusalem. The ophthalmologist diagnosed spastic entropion, a condition where muscle spasms force the lower eyelid to fold inward, causing the eyelashes to rub against the cornea. Kara’in underwent surgery; while trying to show us the stitches, he cried out in pain. His peripheral vision is impaired, he says, and he has to undergo another operation in November. Until then he has to be careful not to expose the eye to water or sunlight. One of his arms was broken again and is still in a cast. His sick leave has ended, he hasn’t yet received compensation from National Insurance and he sits at home now, despondent, with no income.
Every few days he gets threatening phone calls from an unlisted number – he thinks it’s the young man who attacked him. The complaint he filed with the police describes a suspicion of “actual aggravated assault by two or more” persons, and “insulting a public official.” Inspector Kara’in is a public official.
A spokesperson for the Israel Police this week stated in reply to a query from Haaretz: “Upon receipt of the complaint an investigation of the incident was launched by the police. Naturally, no details can be given about an ongoing investigation.”
“Really, I’m afraid all the time. Now I’m looking for another job. Twice it’s happened to me. I don’t want to go back there. I look at every Jew and I’m afraid. I am a person who wants to bring money home. I went to my father after the first time and said, ‘Both my arms are broken.’ He asked, ‘What happened?’ I told him, ‘It’s from work.’
“The second time he asked, ‘What’s this?’ I said, ‘It’s from work.’ He told me he doesn’t want me to work [there] anymore. ‘Go get a different job,’ he said. I want to be safe. I don’t want people to make a mess of me again. I’m scared.”
According to data compiled by the Worker’s Hotline NGO, since October 7 there have been many dozens of violent attacks on bus drivers and inspectors in Jerusalem. In fact, 64 such cases have been reported thus far this year – 30 of them in July-August alone. A particularly high number of documented incidents occurred in the vicinity of the post-1967 Ramot and Gilo neighborhoods. Estimates are that only half the cases are reported.
On August 27 another inspector in the same bus company was assaulted on the same route, to Givat Ze’ev. Amer Aruri, a field researcher for B’Tselem–The Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories, who took the testimony, relates that Nusseir Mashal, 25, from Beit Safafa in East Jerusalem, was attacked by five religious passengers. After asking one of the group for his Rav Kav, Mashal was punched, one of his arms was broken and the attackers poured coffee on him. He hasn’t yet decided whether to return to work.
A few days later, a third inspector, Wassim al-Natshe, who was waiting at a bus stop in Givat Ze’ev, was pepper-sprayed. He went back to work.
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