According to the Israel Police, the general crime rate dropped in 2020, while cyber crimes, domestic violence and sexual abuse incidents rose. [1]
According to the Israel Police, the general crime rate dropped in 2020, while cyber crimes, domestic violence and sexual abuse incidents rose. [1]
In Israel the homicide rate is relatively low: in 2015, there were 2.4 people killed per 100,000 inhabitants (in Switzerland the number is 0.71, in Russia it is 14.9, in South Africa it is 34, in Venezuela it is 49). [2] In 2009, 135 people were murdered in Israel.
Six Israeli women were killed by partners in 2021. Of the victims, 3 were Arab-Israeli, compared to 9 Arab-Israeli women out of a total of 11 women killed by partners in 2009. [3] [4]
According to Israel's police, the number of murders is continually decreasing. In 2018, 103 people were the victims of homicide, compared with 136 people in 2017. The murder rate in 2018 was 1.14 people per 100,000 inhabitants [5] [6]
Racist incidents, including violence, continue taking place between the Jewish majority and Arab minority.
In September 2007, eight white supremacists sporting tattoos including the number 88 (code for "Heil Hitler" because "H" is the eighth letter of the alphabet) from Petah Tikva were arrested after a year of being observed desecrating synagogues, giving Nazi salutes in the street, attacking religious Jews, collecting weapons explosives and spreading Nazi propaganda and making a video. They were immigrants from Russia, and only one was fully Jewish. The rest had been allowed to immigrate due to some Jewish ancestry, but were not fully Jewish. [7]
According to Palestinian officials, between 2005 and 2015, there were 11,000 attacks on Palestinians by Jews in the West Bank and in east Jerusalem, including price tag attacks. Between 2010 and 2015, three Palestinians were killed in arson attacks. Arson attacks on property were reported for 15 individual houses, 20 mosques and four churches. [8] In first four months of 2018, there were 13 cases of hate crimes carried out by ultra-nationalists against Palestinians. [9]
Director of the Latin American Institute of the American Jewish Committee in Washington, D.C. Dina Siegel, criminology professor H. G. van de Bunt, and lecturer in criminology Damián Zaitch showed in their book Global Organized Crime that a significant amount of crime in Israel, especially property crime, is committed by the residents of the Palestinian National Authority (PNA or PA). [10]
Motor vehicle theft is a major crime committed by Palestinians. Since the early 1990s, there has been an increase in the rate of robberies in Israel. Between 1994 and 2001, the rate of robberies increased from 14.0 to 30.6 cases per 100,000 population. The reason behind this increase in robberies is analyzed as a result of the establishment of the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank and Gaza Strip which according to the book Global Organized Crime "serves as a safe haven for Palestinian offenders". However, the organized crime industry associated with motor vehicle theft involves not only Palestinians, but also Israeli citizens, both Jewish and Arab. The parts of the stolen cars are removed in "chop shops" in the Palestinian territories and then these vehicles are sold in the black market in Israel. Media reports suggest some of these vehicles are even handed over to high-ranking Palestinian Authority officials. [11] It was reported that since the beginning of 2010 through the end of February 2010, the Palestinian Authority police had destroyed 910 stolen cars. [12]
Although Palestinian criminals are involved in organized crime in the country, Siegel et al. suggested one should not conclude that "organized crime in Israel is dominated by Palestinians. Organized crime committed by Jews or other non-Palestinians has been part of the Israeli crime scene for many years". [13]
Organized crime has increased dramatically in Israel since the 1990s and is described by the BBC and the Israeli Police as a "booming industry". The Israeli organised crime groups have extended their activities in foreign countries like the United States, South Africa, and the Netherlands. [14] According to a report by the Israel Police, drug trafficking, trafficking of women for the purpose of commercial sexual exploitation, illicit gambling, pirate filling stations and real estate are the major forms of crime in the country. [13]
In 2002, the Israel Police documented 464,854 criminal files and non-prosecution cases while the number was 484,688 in 2003. This was an increase of 4.5% over 2002. [15]
Israeli police, according to a Channel 12 report, have claimed there is a conflict of interest between themselves and the Shin Bet when it comes to cracking down on illegal arms and crime in Arab society. The latter works in terms of a mission of "national security" and provides immunity to figures in organized crime who are prepared to act as informants. [16]
Arms trafficking is another form of crime and it is directly associated with terrorism. There are many links between Israeli and Palestinian gangsters that facilitate these ventures. [11]
Violence against minors is also a problem in Israel. In 1999, approximately 7,000 cases of crimes against minors were documented which included physical assault (54%), molestation (37%) and repeated physical victimization (9%). [17] However, Israeli minors are not solely the victims of crime, they are also sometimes the perpetrators. Teenage violence in schools is a problem in Israel; the first major study on teenage crime in the nation by T. Horowitz and M. Amir in 1981 indicated three major forms of violence in Israeli schools: theft, breaking and entering, and vandalism. [18] Studies have suggested that Israeli Arab youth are more violent than Jews in the country, a fact which academics attribute to cultural, social, and economic differences. [19]
According to official data only about a quarter of the prisoners held in Israeli jails are Jews. 73 percent of overall prisoners are non-Jewish security prisoners and criminal prisoners together. [20] [21] The number of Ethiopian-Israeli Jews minors imprisoned in Ofek Prison is approximately 20%, 27 out of 135 minors prisoners and 27 out of 65 Jewish prisoners in this prison. [22]
The Israel Security Agency, better known by the acronyms Shabak or Shin Bet, is Israel's internal security service. Its motto is "Magen veLo Yera'e". The Shin Bet's headquarters are located in northwest Tel Aviv, north of Yarkon Park.
Kiryat Arba or Qiryat Arba is an urban Israeli settlement on the outskirts of Hebron, in the southern West Bank. Founded in 1968, in 2022 it had a population of 7,490.
The Maxim restaurant bombing was a suicide bombing which occurred on October 4, 2003, in the beachfront "Maxim" restaurant in Haifa, Israel. Twenty-one civilians were killed and 60 were injured. Among the victims were two families and four children, including a two-month-old baby.
The Cave of the Patriarchs massacre, also known as the Ibrahimi Mosque massacre or the Hebron massacre, was a shooting massacre carried out by Baruch Goldstein, an American-Israeli physician and extremist of the far-right ultra-Zionist Kach movement. On 25 February 1994, during the Jewish holiday of Purim, which had overlapped in that year with the Islamic holy month of Ramadan, Goldstein opened fire with an assault rifle on a large gathering of Palestinian Muslims praying in the Ibrahimi Mosque in Hebron. He killed 29 people, several as young as 12 years, and wounded 125. Goldstein was overpowered and beaten to death by survivors.
Bat Ayin is an Israeli settlement in Gush Etzion in the West Bank, between Jerusalem and Hebron, founded in 1989 by Rabbi Yitzchak Ginsburg, in lands that Israel confiscated from the neighbouring Palestinian villages of Khirbet Beit Zakariyyah and Jab'a. It is administered by the Gush Etzion Regional Council, with a population of less than 1,000, consisting mainly of "Ba'alei T'shuva" Jews with Hasidic tendencies. The international community considers Israeli settlements in the West Bank illegal under international law, but the Israeli disputes this.
Jewish extremist terrorism is terrorism, including religious terrorism, committed by extremists within Judaism.
Yitzhar is an Israeli settlement located in the West Bank, south of the city of Nablus, just off Route 60, north of the Tapuach Junction. The predominantly Orthodox Jewish community falls under the jurisdiction of Shomron Regional Council. In 2022, it had a population of 2,093.
The Jewish Underground, or in abbreviated form, simply makhteret, was a radical right-wing fundamentalism organization considered terrorist by Israel, formed by prominent members of the Israeli political movement Gush Emunim that existed from 1979 to 1984. Two issues catalyzed the establishment of the underground: One was the signing of the Camp David Accords, which led to the Egypt–Israel peace treaty in 1979, and which the movement, opposed to the peace process, wished to block, viewing it as the first step in the establishment of a Palestinian state in the West Bank. A second element was the settlement project, which, in bringing two distinct ethnic communities into closer proximity, led to an uptick in hostilities that brought about a growing emphasis on the existential threat in both communities. The Jewish Underground developed two operational objectives: One consisted of a plot to blow up the Dome of the Rock, while the other branch concentrated on both avenging acts of Palestinian violence against settlers and of establishing a punitive deterrence. Some understood the terrorist acts as a means of inducing Palestinians to flee their homeland, based on the 1948 and 1967 experience, and parallels are drawn to the Terror Against Terror movement, which had a similar aim. Robert Friedman stated that the Makhteret was "the most violent anti-Arab terrorist organization since the birth of Israel".
The Islamic Movement in Israel is an Islamist movement that advocates for Islam in Israel, particularly among Arabs and Circassians.
Israeli casualties of war, in addition to those of Israel's nine major wars, include 9,745 soldiers and security forces personnel killed in "miscellaneous engagements and terrorist attacks", which includes security forces members killed during military operations, by fighting crime, natural disasters, diseases, traffic or labor accidents and disabled veterans whose disabilities contributed to their deaths. Between 1948 and 1997, 20,093 Israeli soldiers were killed in combat, 75,000 Israelis were wounded, and nearly 100,000 Israelis were considered disabled army veterans. On the other hand, in 2010 Yom Hazikaron, Israel honored the memory of 22,684 Israeli soldiers and pre-Israeli Palestinian Jews killed since 1860 in the line of duty for the independence, preservation and protection of the nation, and 3,971 civilian terror victims. The memorial roll, in addition to IDF members deceased, also include fallen members of the Shin Bet security service, the Mossad intelligence service, the Israel Police, the Border Police, the Israel Prisons Service, other Israeli security forces, the pre-state Jewish underground, and the Jewish Brigade and the Jewish Legion.
Racism in Israel encompasses all forms and manifestations of racism experienced in Israel, irrespective of the colour or creed of the perpetrator and victim, or their citizenship, residency, or visitor status. More specifically in the Israeli context, racism in Israel refers to racism directed against Israeli Arabs by Israeli Jews, intra-Jewish racism between the various Jewish ethnic divisions, historic and current racism towards Mizrahi Jews although some believe the dynamics have reversed, and racism on the part of Israeli Arabs against Israeli Jews.
Lehava is a far-right and Jewish supremacist organization based in Israel that strictly opposes Jewish assimilation, objecting to most personal relationships between Jews and non-Jews. It is opposed to the Christian presence in Israel. It has an anti-miscegenation focus, denouncing marriages between Jews and non-Jews forbidden by Orthodox Jewish law. The group has over 10,000 members.
The price tag attack policy, also sometimes referred to as "mutual responsibility", is the name originally given to the attacks and acts of vandalism committed primarily in the occupied West Bank by extremist Israeli settler youths against Palestinian Arabs, and to a lesser extent, against left-wing Israeli Jews, Israeli Arabs, Christians, and Israeli security forces. The youths officially claim that the acts are committed to "exact a price from local Palestinians or from the Israeli security forces for any action taken against their settlement enterprise".
Bezalel Yoel Smotrich is an Israeli far-right politician and lawyer who has served as the Minister of Finance since 2022. The leader of the National Religious Party–Religious Zionism, he previously served as a Knesset member for Yamina.
Palestinians are the target of violence by Israeli settlers and their supporters, predominantly in the West Bank. In November 2021, Israeli Defense Minister Benny Gantz discussed the steep rise in the number of incidents between settlers and Palestinians in the West Bank, many of which result from attacks by residents of illegal settler outposts on Palestinians from neighboring villages. Settler violence also includes acts known as price tag attacks that are in response to actions by the Israeli government, usually against Palestinian targets and occasionally against Israeli security forces in the West Bank.
On 31 July 2015, Israeli settlers firebombed a Palestinian family home in late July 2015 in the village of Duma, killing three people; 18-month-old Ali Dawabsheh was burned alive in the fire, while both his parents died from their injuries within weeks. On 3 January 2016, 21 year old Israeli settler Amiram Ben-Uliel was indicted for the murder, along with an Israeli minor, for participation in planning the murder. In addition, along with two others, they were both charged with one count of membership in a terrorist organization.
An increase of violence occurred in the Israeli–Palestinian conflict starting in the autumn of 2015 and lasting into the first half of 2016. It was called the "Intifada of the Individuals" by Israeli sources, the Knife Intifada, Stabbing Intifada or Jerusalem Intifada by international sources because of the many stabbings in Jerusalem, or Habba by Palestinian sources. 38 Israelis and 235 Palestinians were killed in the violence. 558 Israelis and thousands of Palestinians were injured.
Abraham Abramovsky (1946–2007) was an Israeli-born American jurist and attorney. Born in Israel, he was educated in New York state and became a Professor of Law at Fordham University. He was an expert on Jewish Law and organized crime in the United States and Israel. He published research about the illicit global trade of MDMA, also known as Ecstasy.
Crime in the State of Palestine is present in various forms which include theft, drug trafficking, arms trafficking, burglary, human trafficking and terrorism.
On 15 April 2022, clashes erupted between Palestinians and Israeli Security Forces on the Al-Aqsa Compound in the Old City of Jerusalem. According to the United Nations Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process, the clashes began when Palestinians threw stones, firecrackers, and other heavy objects at Israeli police officers. The policemen used tear gas shells, stun grenades and police batons against the Palestinians. Some Palestinians afterwards barricaded themselves inside the Al-Aqsa Mosque and proceeded to throw stones at the officers. In response, police raided the mosque, arresting those who had barricaded themselves inside. In addition, some damage was done to the mosque's structure.
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