Two young members of Arab society were murdered over the Sukkot holiday, one at a wedding in the country's north and the other in their car in the south. Around 90 Arabs have been murdered since the beginning of the year. As a result, an Arab Lives Matter campaign, which points the finger at, who else, the police and the government, has been launched online.
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Yet the truth is those Israeli governments did believe that Arab lives mattered. Violence in the Arab sector was a top priority under former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Accordingly, the government budgeted around 1 billion shekels (around $312.5 million) to reign in violence in the community. As then-head of the Knesset Internal Affairs and Environment Committee, Likud MK David Amsalem held feverish discussions on the subject to remove barriers to progress. With the support of then-Israel Police Commissioner Roni Alsheikh, former Public Security Minister and current UN envoy Gilad Erdan appointed the country's first Arab Muslim deputy commissioner in the Israel Police, Jamal Hakrush, to improve police services in Arab communities. The system enlisted in the effort, appointments were made, and resources and budgets were allocated because Arab lives do matter and they needed to put an end to their neglect.
As for the murders, they haven't stopped. Budgets aren't enough to meet this challenge. It demands the enlistment of the Arab community and its leadership. Where are the Arab public's elected officials? Their presence in meetings of the Internal Affairs and Environment Committee, which tried with all its might to promote solutions, was minimal and insulting. In 2018, the Knesset passed a law allowing the establishment of a police station in a city regardless of opposition from its municipal council. This law was aimed at promoting the establishment of police stations in Arab cities and villages. The only people to vote against the law were lawmakers from the Joint Arab List and Meretz. Why?
"I'm surprised that those same public officials who got up and shouted about the police being weak in the [Arab] villages and not taking action, and saying we need police, suddenly opposed police stations in villages," Hakrush said at one committee meeting. Herein lies the problem: Arab public officials and opinion leaders are experts at blaming the state, but in the moment of truth, they are the ones who pose an obstacle to progress. Joint Arab List head Ayman Odeh is an excellent orator and tweeter, who marches alongside bereaved mothers whose sons have been killed. But what effort has he made in his own sector? Has his party encouraged the Arab public to cooperate with law enforcement?
When the six security prisoners who broke out of Gilboa Prison were captured, we were told that "where there's a will, there's a way." Ask yourselves: Why isn't the same effort being made to stop the violence in Arab society? The answer: To catch the fugitives, the State of Israel used an iron hand that included the Shin Bet security agency and special police and IDF units. Now imagine those same efforts were made in the Arab sector tomorrow. Would these same people welcome the move, or would they complain they were second-class citizens? Would they assist the Shin Bet and the Israel Police in their efforts, or would they protest police "violence"?
They opt for the easy solution and play the victim. They lead a US-style online campaign that won't bring about any change as the murders continue apace. As long as they see the state as their enemy and refuse to cooperate, the bloodshed will continue. If Arab lives matter, what are they willing to do to stop the violence?
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