An October 2 article published by The New York Times, Violent Crime Spikes Among Arabs in Israel as Officials Admit Neglect, details an increase in sometimes fatal firearms incidents taking place in various Arab communities across Israel.
Noting that such deaths account for 70 percent of all homicides, despite Arabs representing just over 20 percent of the population in Israel, the piece highlights how the “surging violence has shocked the country and put a spotlight on what the government acknowledges to have been decades of neglect of crime in Arab communities.”
The article goes on:
The number of homicides within the Arab community has spiraled in recent years, from 58 in 2013, according to the police, to about 97 in 2020, and at least 98 so far this year. An Arab citizen of Israel is far more likely to get killed by a fellow Arab than by the Israeli police, and more Arabs have been killed by Arabs in Israel so far this year than have been killed by Israeli security forces in confrontations in the occupied West Bank, which receive much greater attention.”
Without a doubt, crime in Arab areas is a problem that deserves to be robustly addressed. It is an issue that has also been widely reported on within Israel (see here and here, for example).
However, there is something startlingly hypocritical about The New York Times pointing out – correctly – that Arab deaths by Israeli security forces “receive much greater attention.”
This is because the NYT happens to contribute to this type of skewed news coverage by incessantly focusing on the conflict with the Palestinians (see here, here and here for a subset of articles published in just the past ten days).
A December 20, 2020, article, An Autistic Man is Killed, Exposing Israel’s Festering Police Brutality Problem, is another case in point.
The piece details the death of a disabled Palestinian who was tragically shot after running from police who had called out to him. It was also reported that the officer who had discharged his weapon would likely face manslaughter charges and that Israeli Defense Minister Benny Gantz issued an immediate apology over the incident.
The reader is then offered some hard-hitting statistics:
Lethal force, while rare, is wielded almost exclusively against Arabs and other minorities: Of 13 people known to have been killed by the [Israeli] police last year, 11 were Palestinians and two were of Ethiopian descent.”
But as is clear from the NYT’s most recent article, which states that there were “3,300 shootings in Arab communities in 2019,” the above-cited figure is not especially egregious. That same year, a total of 88 Israeli Arabs lost their lives as a result of gun violence – eight times the number killed during Israeli police activity in the West Bank, actions that are often taken in self-defense in response to Palestinian terrorism.
The October 2 article later refers to unnamed Arabs who suggested that police reticence to tackle such gun crime is part of a wider conspiracy to allow Arabs to kill each other with an overriding aim of depleting their population in Israel:
Some are skeptical of the authorities’ intentions, believing that they have deliberately let violence run amok in order to weaken the Arab minority in Israel, which largely identifies as Palestinian.”
However, the piece then points out that Israeli police investigations will “in many cases” encounter victims who refuse to cooperate, as well as witnesses and relatives who stick to “a code of silence.”
In some cases “crime scenes are cleaned up before the police arrive.”
For an article that is ostensibly about police “neglect” when it comes to solving Arab-on-Arab gun crime, it is a shame that this revelatory information is not expanded upon. Surely, lack of faith in the police among Arab-Israelis cannot be the only reason some would go so far as to actually interfere in a crime scene to ensure that the perpetrator is not apprehended.
Moreover, the supposition that the Arab minority in Israel “largely identifies as Palestinian” is simply untrue.
According to the 2020 Pluralism Index, compiled by the Jewish People Policy Institute, 51 percent of non-Jews in Israel said they identified as “Arab-Israelis” compared to just 7 percent who said that they primarily considered themselves “Palestinian.” In addition, just under a quarter of non-Jews describe themselves as simply “Israeli.”
The NYT also downplays the Israeli government’s recent measures to combat the spike in Arab-on-Arab crime.
For example, Prime Minister Naftali Bennett has made eliminating this problem a plank of his domestic agenda and on Sunday said such violence had reached a “red line,” while announcing a move to enlist Israel’s internal security agency, the Shin Bet, and even perhaps the military to stem the rising tide.
The Shin Bet, which is normally used to tackle terror threats, would be tasked with breaking up Arab organized crime gangs, which are behind many of the weapons trafficking operations that make guns available in afflicted communities.
Although the NYT mentions that Bennett convened a ministerial task force to address the issue, it notes that “successive Israeli governments have made promises and proposed plans of action;” the suggestion being that these have amounted to nothing.
The article also claims that Arab society is particularly vulnerable to crime because it “lacks access to regular banking” and therefore relies on cash. Furthermore, the “lack of building permits and space for new housing in cramped Arab cities and towns” consequently means that Arab-Israelis cannot obtain mortgages or loans, thus becoming targets for loan sharks and debt collectors.
There are two very important points that are entirely absent from the article, though.
First, the new Israeli government is completely different from its predecessors because for the first time in history it includes an Islamist political party, Ra’am.
Second, Ra’am has secured the biggest cash injection into exclusively Arab communities ever with $16.3 billion earmarked for development plans. This includes money for infrastructure projects, as well as funds that are specifically for fighting crime.
Any suggestion, therefore, that the current government is not serious about tackling festering problems in Arab communities does not ring true.
In any event, deadly incidents involving Arabs that take place within their communities are appalling and must be curbed.
Yet, The New York Times might want to consider its own past coverage when bemoaning the lack of attention this matter has garnered.
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