Hundreds of protesters rallied outside the Prime Minister’s Office in Jerusalem on Sunday, November 9, demanding action over the rocketing murder rate in the Arab community. Many of the protesters, among them Hadash MKs, held up photographs of members of the community who have been killed. The protesters raised photos of murder victims and are demanding to eradicate the rampant crime.

Mohammad Barakeh, the chairman of the Arab Monitoring High Committee and leading Communist Party of Israel member, told the crowd, “Crime in Arab society is the result of a deliberate policy, designed to divert attention from political and national issues and focus it on personal security.” “Instead of working to develop our towns and society, we’re thinking about how to get out of our homes safely.” Barakeh accused the racist government of responsibility for the “catastrophe.”

Since Friday evening, seven Arabs citizens were killed in violent circumstances, the latest spate of killings in a larger crime wave that has claimed 223 lives this year so far. In the deadly weekend Amir al-Hawa was killed in north Tel Aviv; Hussein Samouni was killed in Jaffa; Mohammed Moghrabi and 16-year-old Walid Moghrabi were killed in Ramle; Abd al-Fattah Sabihat was killed in Ma’ale Iron; Murad Yousef was killed on Route 66 near the Tishbi junction; and Muath al-Hadra was killed in Jerusalem’s a-Tur neighborhood. All seven were killed by gunfire. No arrests have yet been reported.

Members of the Arab-Palestinian society in Israel protest crime and murder in their community, outside the Prime Minister’s Office in Jerusalem, November 9, 2025 (Yonatan Sindel/Flash90)

The Abraham Initiatives, a coexistence organization that tracks crime statistics, said that the weekend’s killing brought the number of Arabs killed in violent and criminal incidents in Israel since the start of 2025 to 223. Of that number, it said, 189 were shot to death, 11 of them by police officers. It said 112 of the victims were aged 30 and under, and five were below the age of 18. Twenty of the victims were women. According to the organization, at the same time last year, 204 people were killed in violent and criminal incidents, meaning there has been a 9 percent increase in 2025.

Related: https://maki.org.il/en/?p=33051