For this government, political suppression of Israel’s Arabs is just the start

A demonstration calling for the government to act against crime in the Arab community, in Jerusalem in January 2026

Dahlia Scheindlin writes in Haaretz on 15 June 2026:

The year isn’t halfway over, but with 150 murders in Israel so far, according to Haaretz’ reporting, the rate is already close to that of 2025, when the Israeli police reported 305 in total. The percentage of Arab victims, Palestinian citizens of Israel, (125 of the total) has risen relative to last year – from 78 to 83 percent at present.

No doubt Israel’s Minister of National Security Itamar Ben-Gvir is satisfied that the rate of Jewish victims is lower. He sees Arabs in Israel primarily as targets for incitement and political suppression. And apparently he’s not troubled when they die.

With the upcoming elections, many will be paying attention to government attempts to suppress Arab votes – but don’t be fooled. This government doesn’t just seek to smother Arab citizens’ political voice; they want them gone.

Different Rules
The examples are piling up daily. A deadly shooting attack last week by an Arab citizen of Israel from the town of Taibeh (in the Triangle area of Israel) quickly became the excuse for Ben-Gvir to demand sweeping extrajudicial killings, and the application of his new death penalty law, which its authors intended to apply exclusively to Arab-Palestinians. In response to questions by a Haaretz reporter about last week’s attack, Ben-Gvir called on the prime minister to ban the Arab political party Balad and other Arab parties, and kick them out of Knesset.

He also called for shooting all attackers on sight; applying the death penalty would require hanging them according to the new law (up to now, Israel’s laws allowed the death penalty only for Nazis and their collaborators, and it was only ever applied once).

It’s clear that this is not a call to be vigilant and stop attacks in real time, because there have never been any such calls to shoot Israeli Jewish attackers on sight when they descend regularly on Palestinian civilians in the West Bank, beating them to a pulp – including the elderly. There was no call to apply the death penalty or shoot on sight when an IDF soldier shot and killed a seven-month old baby; the IDF opened an inquiry last Sunday – there has been no public update and most likely, the case will be closed.

Six people who were part of the group that violently raided the town of Huwara and surrounding areas earlier this month have reportedly been detained (out of dozens); some have already been released.

If these attacks – by the Arab Israeli citizen from Taibeh, the settlers and the soldiers are all terror (violence against civilians for political aims), then Israel can tolerate terror from Jewish citizens; Arabs should be shot or hanged (as per the death penalty law). Crocodile tears about settler terror from the right wing a few months ago were mere theatrics, and fleeting.

After the shooting attack last week, Bezalel Smotrich, minister of annexation (and occasionally finance), wrote on X of a terror network that “seeks to eliminate Israel,” meaning its Arab citizens. That’s a classic way of justifying eliminationist attacks on the putative existential threat. Smotrich whined about the need to “make order” as if he himself wasn’t part of the government in power for nearly four years.  The equation is simple,” he wrote. “Whoever accepts the sovereignty of the state will live peacefully. Whoever chooses the path of terror – his blood is on his own hands.”

Anyone familiar with Smotrich’s 2017 “Decisive Plan” will recognizes the options from there. Force Palestinians in the West Bank to drop their national identity (he wasn’t dreaming of Gaza openly yet) and demand that they live as individuals under Israeli authority, leave or be killed.

This dangerous elite level incitement is reinforced by the extreme-right public. A religious right-wing Hebrew publication, The Jewish Voice, carried an op-ed in February arguing that “there should have been a military operation ages ago to clean out the nests of terror, jihad and crime in Arab society.” In an article following last week’s attack, another author in that publication called Taibeh a “hornet’s nest,” due to attacks (or suspicious individuals).

My point is not to minimize attacks on Israeli Jews; it’s that collective guilt and punishment and dehumanizing language are fully embraced in these circles.

As for crime within Arab society in Israel, the Israeli government has a ready answer. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is reportedly seeking to divest himself of the Arab task force to fight crime – and give it to Ben-Gvir. The latter blames all prior governments for the problem (as if Ben-Gvir hadn’t canceled successful policies to reduce crime in the Arab sector from previous governments). He also believes that Arab society should police itself (as if fighting crime isn’t the job of the state).

With Ben-Gvir adopting a soft on (Arab) crime policy, government officials act shocked at each Arab murder, and call for the Shin Bet to do the job – not a subtle allusion to the military regime that ruled Arab citizens in the early years of statehood.

The final proof of the right-wing campaign to destroy Arab life in Israel is that nothing Arab leaders say, and nothing the Arab public does, can dispel the hate.

Ayman Odeh, the former leader of the Arab-Jewish party Hadash and an unswerving devotee of nonviolence, wrote a full-throated condemnation of violence after last weeks’ attack. So did the mayor of Taibeh, reported Haaretz, as well as city council members. “We reject all manifestations of violence in any form, regardless of their causes. The city of Taibeh is committed to the values of peace, tolerance, and adherence to the law, and is continuously working to strengthen mutual respect and good neighborly relations among all citizens,” they said.

It won’t help. Israeli Jews have been conditioned for years by their leaders to see Arab citizens as a fifth column and a threat, no matter what the evidence says.

The Israel Democracy Index from 2025 found that the share of Arabs who agree that “most Arabs want to integrate into Israeli society” rose from a large two-thirds majority in 2018 to nearly three-quarters in 2025. Yet during that same phase, the share of Jews who believed this fell 30 points, from 67 to 37 percent. One third of that decline happened before May 2021, when Arab-Jewish riots might well have negatively influenced Jewish views.

When asked if Arabs could feel they are part of the Palestinian people and still be loyal Israeli citizens, just 16 percent of Jews agreed in 2025, down from 38 percent a decade earlier. Most of that decline was not in the aftermath of the internal violence in May 2021, but after October 7 – when many Arabs were either victims, hostages or heroes who saved others.

Israeli Jews’ deteriorating trust in Arab citizens run completely counter to the actual trends among Arabs in Israel towards greater social, economic and political integration, and their attitudes of positive partnership seen in surveys.

Anti-Arab incitement and political suppression will be just the start – at the end of this path lies something far worse. The only thing left for Israelis who care about their fellow citizens is to defend and protect one another.

This article is reproduced in its entirety