Thread by @WholePicture_

#Thread about #Israel #Netanyahu @netanyahu #Vote #discrimination #Violence in #Arab #communitymatters :

Violence is rampant in Israel's Arab communities

The Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu courted the Arab minority in the election campaign.

Above all, it wants one thing from the government: that it finally do something about violence and crime in its communities.

by @NZZ @NZZAusland
Source: nzz.ch/international/…

At the center of the dispute are two of the largest and most respected families in Kabul: the Rayans of Mayor Salih Rayan and the Akris of school principal Khalil Akri.

It all began, they say, with a fight in the playground of the only secondary school that one of Akri's sons was involved in. From then on it ferments.

One of Mayor Rayan's sons finds that another member of the Akri family is standing in his way with his car.

A battle of words ensues, fists fly, two uninvolved men try to mediate, someone pulls out a weapon, shots are fired, the two mediators are injured. From then on there is no stopping it.

Cars are set on fire, shops are robbed, shots echo through the night. Anyone who is out and about during the day looks around nervously.

Schools are closed because of the corona pandemic, but tensions in the local government are getting so unbearable that the mayor is sending the Akri family workers home.

This does not contribute to relaxation. The police, who only have a small guard, set up barricades between the living quarters of the hostile families, but otherwise appear helpless.

On August 23, members of the Rayan family fire at a cousin of the school principal. He gets away with the horror, but his two little daughters are easily injured. Then relatives of the cousin stormed a shop.

113 Arabs were killed in the last year - an increase of nearly 60 percent in three years.

According to a study by the Abraham Initiatives, more than 60 percent of Arabs fear for their personal safety - almost five times as many as among the Jews. Only 17 percent trust the police.

Drastic increase in violence among Arab Israelis

Murder and Death Victims in Israel, by Population

Green - Jewish Israeli
Orange Arab Israelis
Source: by @NZZAusland

nzz.ch/international/…

Israeli politicians and the media portray violence as a cultural phenomenon. The Arabs are just like that, they are clinging to tribal traditions and practicing blood revenge, so the tenor.

Between 1948 and 1999, the crime rate among Arab Israelis was only 5 percent, whereas today they account for 66 percent of the crimes.

«We demanded autonomy in education, culture and religious questions. The state refused, but left it to us to get the crime under control. "

Palestinians carried out suicide attacks, bomb attacks and rocket attacks, and the Israeli military used tanks, air strikes and targeted killings against the insurgents.

In the vacuum, Jewish gangs thrived, waging their own war that threatened to get out of control. The then Prime Minister Ariel Sharon then took a hard hand against the criminals. Within a short time, the crime rate among Jews fell from 40 to 6 percent.

At the same time, organized crime has shifted to the Arab communities.

Poverty among the Arab minority is much higher than that among the Jewish majority; the 25 municipalities with an unemployment rate of more than 20 percent are all Arabic, including Kabul.

In addition, there is the notorious shortage of living space. The Arab communities in Israel are systematically discriminated against the Jewish, according to a report by Human Rights Watch.

hrw.org/news/2020/05/1…
If you need money, you can get a loan on the black market, says Ali. "If you cannot repay the money in time, the criminals threaten to shoot you." In particular, young people without jobs or prospects fell into the clutches of criminal gangs.

The pandemic has recently exacerbated the crisis: theft, robbery, racketeering, and drug and arms trafficking all increased. According to a Knesset report, there are around 400,000 illegal weapons in circulation, most of them from the army or police.

As a rule, the weapons are sold to their Arab partners through Jewish criminals, says Ali. "The only real coexistence between Arabs and Jews is in the world of crime."

Many believe that the police are in league with the criminals, or at least they don't care about the violence. "When a Jew is murdered, the police act as if we were here in Afghanistan"

During the election campaign, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu toured Arab communities for the first time and promised voters the equivalent of CHF 28 million in investments to fight crime.

That brought him a few thousand votes, but not the breakthrough he had hoped for in the March 23 elections.

The reason that Netanyahu's Likud party did relatively well was more because many of the Arab voters stayed away from the polls out of disappointment at the lack of progress in the fight against crime.

Nevertheless, this time too, most of the Arab parties, the United List and the moderate Islamist party voted for Raam von Mansur Abbas.

Five years ago the government launched a “development plan” worth around four billion Swiss francs.

A lot has happened since then, roads have been built, education has been invested and police officers have been recruited from among the minority.

But the gap between the Jewish and the Arab communities is so great that, from the point of view of experts, this is at best a small start. "We need an industrial area and cultural facilities here so that we can offer the young people a perspective," says the mayor.

The state must act with a hard hand against the criminals and come up with a comprehensive plan to end the discrimination. But the Arabs themselves are also challenged. They would have to isolate the criminals in their ranks, boycott them.