‘Crime in Arab sector has turned it into Wild West’
Moran Azulay, NYET
The parliamentary commission on inquiry investigating “civilian terror in Arab society in Israel,” convened Monday.
The meeting was called by MK Ahmad Tibi (United Arab List-Ta’al). Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Internal Security Minister Yitzhak Aharonovitch, Police Commissioner Yohanan Danino, Finance Minister Yuval Steinitz and Knesset Speaker Reuven Rivlin attended.
Aharonovitch presented alarming data regarding crime rates in the Arab sector, saying that over 30% of inmates is Israel’s prisons are Arabs.
Aharonovitch noted that in 2011, the police handled 1,100 shootings in the Arab sector and 64 murder cases. “The problem is that too many incidents go unreported… we have to take the data we have and at the very least double it.”
Netanyahu noted that while the police’s overall data suggested a drop in crime rates in Israel, crime was on the rise in the Arab sector.
“Crime in the (Arab) sector has made their life unbearable’, in terms of murder, the murder of women, robbery and harassment. Over 40% of the people fear they will be harmed – it’s like the Wild West and we have to do something.”
Police Commissioner Danino spoke about the subject of “honor killings,” saying that the department has officially dispensed with the term, and now classifies them as “domestic killings.”
MK Tibi said that the sector expects the government and the police “to take care of crime, prevent it and solve criminal cases. We also want to know what it being done to collect illegal firearms.”
I think domestic abuse problems are up wherever the economy is faltering. It’s not unusual to see an article a week about murder/suicide in the local paper. In one of the worst events I have ever heard of in my life, a man was accused of murdering his wife which his two sons saw, but they were too little to talk about it. He moved to Washington state with his kids to be near his father, who was then found to have child pornography on his computer. The boys were put into foster care. The man went to court demanding to see his sons, the court agreed to it as long as they were accompanied by a social worker who then brought the two boys to his house. After the boys were let in, the man shoved the social worker so she could not enter and and minutes later the whole house exploded killing him and his sons. He had free-flowing gas spewing, and the social worker smelled it but could do nothing.
The boys were beginning to talk about what they saw the night their mother was killed, that she was in the trunk of the car. To make a horror story worse, the boys were attacked with an ax before the explosion.