Woman killed in Nahariya, Moldovan national slain in Tel Aviv

A pair of homicides overnight Saturday saw a woman stabbed to death in the north and her son arrested as a suspect, and a Moldovan national slain in Tel Aviv, with his partner arrested in the case.

The killings came amid a recent spike in homicides across the country.

In the northern coastal city of Nahariya, a woman was stabbed to death in her home, the Israel Police said. Hebrew media reports identified her as Daniela Yakubovich, 67.

The stabbing was reported to the Magen David Adom emergency service just after 10 p.m. Medics who arrived at the apartment on Iris Street tried to resuscitate her but were forced to declare her dead at the scene.

Police began searching for her son, who reportedly has mental health issues, and he was arrested shortly afterwards on suspicion that he killed her.

The son was said to be known to welfare services.

Neighbors told the Ynet news outlet that Yakubovich’s husband had rushed out of the apartment, covered in blood, to seek help, declaring “a catastrophe has happened to us.”

The sources said that a restraining order had been issued against the son, though he still had a key to his parents’ apartment.

A neighbor told the outlet that the son in the past had been “very violent” toward neighbors on the street and had punctured the tires of their cars.

The head of the Israel Women’s Network lobby group, Tal Hochman, noted in a statement that 16 women have been killed in domestic violence incidents in the country since the beginning of the year, four of them in the past two weeks.

“The murder of women in Israel has become a cruel phenomenon, a routine of failure, lack of prevention, helplessness, and indifference on the part of decision-makers,” Hochman said.

She claimed that available technological means to prevent homicides are barely being deployed, even as hundreds of women face potentially fatal danger. Hochman blamed the government, and in particular National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir, who is responsible for the police.

According to Ynet, 30 women were killed by domestic violence last year, making 2024 a particularly bloody year.

Among some of the recent cases was a woman found stabbed to death last Monday in a Bat Yam apartment. An hours-long standoff between the police and the woman’s recently estranged husband ended with him jumping to his death from the roof of the apartment building.

Last Sunday, in Kibbutz Ashdot Ya’akov, Ravit Gal Nechmad, 54, was killed by her former partner Herzel Bar Oz, 67, who apparently killed himself after shooting her dead.

And on May 29, Sarah Richardson, 73, was found dead in her home in Ma’ale Levona. Her son later confessed to suffocating her with a cushion, according to Hebrew media reports.

Separately, early Sunday morning, a Moldovan national, 32, was stabbed to death in his apartment on Heil Hashiryon Street in Tel Aviv, police said in a statement.

MDA medics declared him dead at the scene.

Officers arrested a woman — the man’s partner, 45, who is also from Moldova — and detained three other Moldovan nationals for questioning.

On Thursday, a Sudanese national was fatally stabbed during a brawl in the coastal city of Netanya. The 40-year-old man was stabbed in Netanya’s outdoor market during a heated confrontation with a fellow Sudanese national, according to local news outlet NetanyaNet.

Last month, an elderly foreign national was killed during a suspected mugging in Tel Aviv. An Eritrean national was arrested as a suspect in the case.

And last week a series of gangland killings saw six people shot dead last week in incidents around the country.

The unrelenting crime wave has worsened considerably over the past two years since the installation of the far-right Ben Gvir as national security minister. Much of the deadly violence has happened in the Arab Israeli community.

Ben Gvir has remained silent throughout the past few days despite the high number of murders.