Interview197 Arab Israelis were killed in homicides so far this year

NGO head says Israeli racism and neglect responsible for Arab sector’s high murder rate

With 2024 on path to become the deadliest year on record for Arab Israelis, Abraham Initiatives co-director Amnon Be’eri-Sulitzeanu points to National Security Minister Ben Gvir

Israeli security forces at the scene of a deadly explosion, believed to be connected to an ongoing feud between crime families, in the central Israel city of Ramle, September 12, 2024. (Avshalom Sassoni/ Flash90)
Israeli security forces at the scene of a deadly explosion, believed to be connected to an ongoing feud between crime families, in the central Israel city of Ramle, September 12, 2024. (Avshalom Sassoni/ Flash90)

A deadly car bombing in September that killed four members of the same family — a grandmother, mother, and two children — sent shockwaves through the central Israeli city of Ramle. For Amnon Be’eri-Sulitzeanu, head of the coexistence group Abraham Initiatives, the attack, linked to warring crime families, was a grim but predictable outcome of the escalating, unchecked violence in Arab society in recent years.

“This isn’t new; it’s just the latest dramatic event,” Be’eri-Sulitzeanu said, emphasizing that in recent years there have been several cases of multi-victim homicides.

With 197 members of the Arab community in Israel killed in homicides since the beginning of the year, 2024 is on path to become the deadliest year on record for Arab citizens. Be’eri-Sulitzeanu places much of the blame on Israel’s government, particularly on far-right firebrand Itamar Ben Gvir, whose National Security Ministry oversees the police. Ben Gvir, he said, is “the worst person on earth to handle this issue of crime and violence.”

Ben Gvir said last month’s explosion was the result of “the result of decades of neglect of crime in the Arab sector” and blamed Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara for preventing administrative detention against suspects.

But according to Be’eri-Sulitzeanu, the surge in violence stems from a combination of Ben Gvir’s “racist attitude towards Arab society” and the deliberate freezing of key government policies passed in the Knesset to tackle the issue.

Be’eri-Sulitzeanu pointed to Resolution 549, adopted in October 2021 during the Bennett-Lapid government — which notably included the Arab Ra’am party — as a key factor in curbing the rise in victims and fostering greater trust between the Arab public and the police. Under Ben Gvir’s watch, many of the programs established by the resolution, like the Stop the Bleeding initiative implemented in seven of the Arab communities with the highest violent crime rates, were either suspended or discontinued entirely.

Amnon Be’eri-Sulitzeanu, head of the coexistence NGO the Abraham Initiatives. (Courtesy)

For the past 35 years, the Abraham Initiatives has been active in advocating for a more nuanced approach to policing in Arab communities by emphasizing the need to distinguish between criminal and security issues. According to Beeri-Sulitzeanu, when dealing with Arab citizens, Israel Police functions not only as a traditional law enforcement agency, but also as a security force, “a dual role that cannot allow it to gain trust and cooperation and approval by the Arab minority.”

The feeling, he said, was that the police only “care about the Arab minority when it poses a threat to the Jewish majority.”

In a letter to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu following the Ramle explosion, Be’eri-Sulitzeanu pointed to “the erosion of the status quo” at the Temple Mount as a key factor in the growing divide, alongside efforts to restrict Muslim access to the holy site during Ramadan. He accused Ben Gvir of enabling these actions and called for the prime minister to fire him, cautioning that failure to act could lead to the collapse of Israel’s rule of law.

“The fuse has already been lit, it’s only a matter of time until it reaches the powder keg,” Be’eri-Sulitzeanu warned.

National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir addresses the press at the scene of a car explosion in Ramle, September 12, 2024. (National Security Ministry)

Since October 7, 2023, when thousands of Hamas-led terrorists slaughtered 1,200 people in southern Israel and kidnapped 251 to the Gaza Strip, the sentiment that Israel’s police only serve Jewish citizens has only intensified.

In the immediate aftermath of the October 7 massacre, the Abraham Initiatives partnered with Tzedek Centers and Givat Haviva, two other groups promoting shared society among Jews and Arabs, to establish the Guardians of Partnership project in cities where both communities live side by side.

Initially aimed at preventing clashes between Jews and Arabs such as those that unfolded during the May 2021 conflict with Hamas, the project has now expanded to focus on conflict management and strengthening ties between police, the municipality and local civil society organizations. A study commissioned by the Abraham Initiatives found that both the municipality and local organizations play a crucial role in assisting the police in maintaining order in the city.

In June, the Abraham Initiatives itself became the target of the violence afflicting Arab society when a grenade exploded in its headquarters in Lod, destroying its offices. Police have yet to determine the motive for the attack or whether the Abraham Initiatives was the intended target. While Be’eri-Sulitzeanu is cautious about drawing conclusions, he acknowledged the possibility that the attack could have been intended as a warning.

The office of the Abraham Initiatives coexistence organization following an explosion, in Lod, June 26, 2024. (Abraham Initiatives)

“It is possible [the attack] was done on ideological grounds, connected to the fact that we’re leading the fight against crime and violence,” he said.

A shared society?

The Abraham Initiatives’ mandate extends beyond crime to all areas affecting integration and equality. One main area of focus is education. The NGO designed a program for teachers and principals in Jewish and Arab schools, which is pending recognition by the education ministry, to help them lead constructive discussions in the classroom about a shared society.

According to a poll released earlier this month by the Israel Democracy Institute (IDI), 48% of Jewish respondents and 65% of Arab respondents agreed that Israel’s education system, divided into separate streams for different groups, limits its ability to promote a shared narrative for all citizens. In May of this year, the group appealed to Education Minister Yoav Kisch to dramatically expand interactions between Jewish and Arab students to combat animosity.

“When a [Jewish] student says, ‘How can we live with Arabs? We need to deport them,’ or worse, ‘to kill them,’ we need to be able to talk about it in a way that reduces hatred and fear,” Be’eri-Sulitzeanu said. “The same goes with the Arab schools. There are very harsh sentiments because of the war, because of the feeling of marginality and exclusion and threat.

“People feel that they cannot talk, they cannot think, they cannot express their opinions. They cannot express their concern about their families and community in Gaza, for instance. There is a need to manage it in a constructive way,” he said.

An Arabic language class presented by the Abraham Initiatives coexistence NGO. (Courtesy)

Notably, the IDI online survey found that 64 percent of respondents agreed the education system should adapt its curriculum due to the war, with a majority of both Jewish (53%) and Arab (51%) respondents supporting the idea of teachers leading discussions on the return of hostages, including the moral implications of bringing them back at any cost.

Areas of intervention

Over its 35-year history, the Abraham Initiatives has notched several achievements in the educational sphere. In the mid-2000s, on the heels of the Second Intifada, the NGO piloted a program called Ya Salam, teaching culture and spoken Arabic to fifth and sixth graders in two Jewish schools. Within a few years, the program expanded to 200 schools across Israel, making history as the first educational initiative taught solely by Arab teachers.

A second area of intervention is integrating Arabs into organizations and workplaces.

“Arabs are integrated almost everywhere, but those places are not suited, not adjusted for a bicultural environment. Many of them were born and developed as Israeli Jewish organizations. They need to nurture a sense of affiliation and belonging, also among the Arabs, in the organizations,” said Be’eri-Sulitzeanu.

Illustrative: Activists march with symbolic coffins denouncing violent crime in Arab communities on August 6, 2023, in Tel Aviv. (Jack Guez/AFP)

The Abraham Initiatives released a survey in March, conducted through the Afkar Institute, that found that despite rising tensions, 83% of Arab employees and 72% of Jewish employees in shared workplaces reported good or very good relations. While many avoided discussing the October 7 massacre and the ensuing war — 60% of Arab employees and 48% of Jewish employees — those who did engage in these conversations overwhelmingly found them to be positive or neutral, with 86% of Arabs and 79% of Jews reporting such outcomes.

A third pillar is crisis management and emergency response, with the Abraham Initiatives’ efforts in this area greatly expanding since the onset of the war, especially in peripheral areas. The group has worked to bridge gaps in life-saving services, including policing, fire brigades, and those provided by the IDF’s Home Front Command and Defense Ministry. It has urged government bodies to provide mobile bomb shelters and deploy the Iron Dome system to protect unrecognized Bedouin villages and produced a series of Arabic-language videos on behalf of the Home Front Command for war-related emergencies including terror and rocket attacks.

“There is a psychological barrier for Arabs to even listen to the instructions of the army. Once they see soldiers, they say, ‘It’s not meant for us.’” Be’eri-Sulitzeanu said. “We discovered that if we take almost the same instructions again, with the Home Front Command in the back advising us, we can produce materials that are listened to and watched by the Arab population.”

Israeli security forces at the scene of an explosion in Ramle on September 12, 2024. (Avshalom Sassoni/ Flash90)

Israel’s right-wing government and the professed antagonism of some of its members towards the notion of a shared society is not the only challenge facing the Abraham Initiatives. With Israeli society overwhelmed by multiple urgent issues, there is also little wherewithal or willingness to deal with anything else, Be’eri-Sulitzeanu said.

Another challenge is that attitudes have grown much more extreme. Feelings of solidarity between Jewish Israelis and Arab Israelis reflected in polls at the beginning of the war have since dissipated, he said.

“The rift between Jews and Arabs is drawing deeper and wider as the war drags on,” said Be’eri-Sulitzeanu.

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