The Limited Times

Now you can see non-English news...

Without any horizon: the youth in Arab society become easy prey for criminals - voila! news

2022-08-18T12:47:25.251Z


Police data indicate the high rate of crime by Arab minors, and in Arab society they point to neglect, poverty and the lack of standards and frameworks as the main causes of the phenomenon. "A red light should be turned on, there is a serious potential for deterioration to the point of civil war" | "On the irons", a special project


Without any horizon: the youth in Arab society become easy prey for criminals

Police data indicate the high rate of crime by Arab minors, and in Arab society they point to neglect, poverty and the lack of standards and frameworks as the main causes of the phenomenon.

"A red light should be turned on, there is a serious potential for deterioration to the point of civil war" |

"On the irons", a special project

Yoav Itiel

08/18/2022

Thursday, August 18, 2022, 3:30 p.m. Updated: 3:33 p.m.

  • Share on Facebook

  • Share on WhatsApp

  • Share on Twitter

  • Share by email

  • Share in general

  • Comments

    Comments

The rate of youth delinquency in Arab society is higher than in Jewish society and in certain areas, even very dominant - according to police data.

For example, the crime rate of murder and manslaughter involving Arab youths is 68% of the crimes, three times the rate of Arab residents in Israel (21%).

In economic crimes the percentage of Arab youth is 57%, in assault crimes 36%, and in property crimes 33%.

In security offenses, the share of the Arab youth is 78%.



The police data refer to cases opened against minors who are residents of Israel in the years 2019-2021, in a document prepared by the Knesset's research and information department at the request of Knesset member Osama Saadi (the joint list), which concerned crime and violence among youth in Arab society.

Juvenile delinquency

Types of offenses Knesset Research and Information Center (photo: official website, Walla system!)

According to the CBS data for 2019, the rate of convictions per 1,000 people among Arab minors is 1.1 - almost double the rate for Jews, which is 0.6. Surveys conducted by the Ministry of Education show that Arab youth remain exposed even at school. For example, in the "Pedagogical Climate and Environment" survey Conducted in the months of January-March 2020, in most of the survey indicators, the rate of students in Arab education exposed to violence was higher than the rate of students in Hebrew education, especially in the upper divisions. The indicators included: the students' lack of a sense of protection, involvement in violent incidents, verbal violence, digital violence and exposure to bullying.



Similarly, in the school violence monitoring survey conducted in 2019, most indicators show a similar picture of higher rates of violent phenomena in Arabic-speaking schools.

The indicators include: serious violence, bringing cold weapons to school, violence towards the educational staff and avoiding coming to school for fear of injury.

Even more serious is the situation of those who are sent to an out-of-home setting, as a result of complaints of violence and sexual harassment in boarding schools for at-risk youth in Arab society.



According to the chairman of the labor and welfare committee in the Knesset, Efrat Reiten (Labor), it was learned about severe violence and neglect of children and youth in welfare settings in Arab society, without contact with their parents, and without care and support. "The authorities don't even have up-to-date data.

The numbers - not updated - are shocking and shocking.

We did not imagine that the situation was so serious.

Just by reading you can simply cry." In a discussion held in February, the committee found that about 47% of Arab children are at risk and there is a lack of alternative settings - detention, boarding schools, and therapeutic communities.

Illustration

Teenagers (photo: official website, Walla system!)

If everything starts at home, then it is worth noting that the data of the Council for the Peace of the Child from 2020 shows that more than half (50.2%) of the Arab youth in Israel live in poverty.

This is a rate that is more than twice as high as the rate of youth in Israel in general who are below the poverty line.

About 13 thousand Arab teenagers aged 15-17 do not work and do not study at all.

This number is higher than the number of Jewish teenagers who do not study or work (even though Arabs make up only about a fifth of Israel's population), and the proportion of Arabs who do not study or work (7%) is also almost double the proportion of Jewish teenagers (4%) who do not study or work.

Those of them who do not work, despite their willingness, in most cases cannot receive unemployment benefits, which are given to those who have not yet turned 20 under various conditions that depend on military service.

According to the "Itach-Maaki" association, more than 8,000 unemployed Arab youths are affected by this.



Muhammad (pseudonym), a 16-year-old entering the 11th grade in Umm al-Fahm, testified that there is not much to do in the city, especially in the summer. They no longer go to the beaches in nearby Hadera, because it is dangerous there for Arabs. If they only travel to Haifa, a city too far away drive to her on a daily basis. A young man will often spend time at the gym or the coffee shop in town. "It's easy to get into trouble," he said, "those looking for money 'messenger' drugs, get a gun and shoot people, burn a car.

You get a thousand shekels for it."



The boys are not afraid of the police.

"Only when there are demonstrations do they know how to come to houses and arrest people," he said about the feeling of the police not being present on the city's streets.

Muhammad, a normative teenager, described how it is difficult, even for a teenager his age, to avoid friction with juvenile delinquency and how conflicts are resolved alone, without involving the police.

In his case it started urgently in line for the kiosk at school.

"It was crowded, someone thought I pushed him, a fight and beatings started," he repeated.

"If I hadn't gone to his house with my father afterwards to close it, then they would surely have been waiting for me outside the school and beaten or stabbed. Such incidents in the past have almost ended in murder," he said.

"Once they came into the school, shot someone sitting in a car and left. The police came, counted bullets, took pictures and left. We haven't heard anything about it since."

More in Walla!

Freedom is in full swing, and some of the bored youth seek refuge in drugs and alcohol: "There is violence"

To the full article

"Everyone has a weapon and everyone shoots. It's a kind of model of masculinity."

Muhammad and Abed (Photo: Yoav Ityel)

Abd (pseudonym), also a 16-year-old 11th grade student from Umm al-Fahm, said, "Everyone has a weapon and everyone is shooting.

It is a kind of model of masculinity.

I'm sure it's not like that in Tel Aviv, but here they are more afraid of them than they are of the police." He also took part this year in the event that flared up in seconds. "We were sitting with some friends in a hookah cafe in the city, suddenly one of them got angry at something I said.

Then I started getting calls that I would come to meet him at the Saban mall at the entrance to the city.

He said I would come alone but I knew he would bring friends so I didn't come alone either.



"We both went down to talk alone, suddenly a friend of his came out from somewhere and stabbed me in the neck. Luckily my friend was watching from afar and came and laid him down and took control of him otherwise he might have killed me. The doctor said if the screwdriver had gone in another centimeter I would be in a different world today. But after this incident I continued receiving threatening phone calls that I got involved with someone connected to the Hariri family. I went with my father and it's like we closed it but I don't feel that the issue is closed at all. This guy every time I see him asks what I'm looking at and his friend comes and hugs me and says that everything is fine, but that's exactly What's scary is that I know it's wrong. You don't go to the police with something like that. The police always think that we young people are indecisive about them and don't believe us for anything."

"Innumerable cosmetic treatments will not help - root canal treatment is needed"

"These data should turn on a red light for all those responsible in all fields, including education and welfare, but also in the law enforcement authorities," said Lavala, former MK Yosef Jabarin, a lecturer in law and education at Tel Hai Academic College, who served as the head of the Committee for the Rights of the Child. There is a dangerous potential here for at-risk youth, who by definition do not study or work, to degenerate into crime on a wide scale.

This may already explain the deterioration in violence that we have witnessed in recent years." According to him, "it is also clear that a systemic confrontation of all the factors involved is needed in order to get to the root cause and countless cosmetic treatments will not help."



Jabarin said that during the period in which he served as chairman of the committee and during his visits to the local authorities, he was exposed to alarming data, from which it appears that thousands of Arab youth are without a framework at all, crowding the streets, wandering and sometimes cut off from the authorities who are unable to locate them so that it is possible to offer them a framework "And then when they are already located, it becomes clear that there are no resources and no standards of personnel and there are not enough proper frameworks in the Arab settlements and in general.

All this in the absence of a positive horizon of income and subsequent housing which are the basis for building a family.

This is a recipe for a rapid deterioration into violence and crime."



He added that "when we recognize and understand the depth of the crisis and distress, in almost all Arab communities we are anxious about the future of Arab society in the absence of a comprehensive strategic activity that will deal with the distress. I personally do not sleep at night worrying that this situation may even worsen beyond what we see today. Researchers I spoke with already recognize the first signs that against the background described as well as the presence of criminal organizations nearby, something much broader and more serious may develop, to the point of degenerating into a civil war."

Juvenile delinquency (photo: official website, Walla system!)

"Criminals have taken over every good part of the Arab street and the youth who grow up in this reality, unfortunately, see them as role models. You even see it in the uniform of black clothes and a visor hat, haircuts and tattoos," said Lavalle!

Attorney Hamudi Masri, a defense attorney who represents many of them in the juvenile courts, and who also serves as chairman of the Wadi Nissens neighborhood committee in Haifa.



"Today, criminals no longer hide the fact that they are criminals. They used to be ashamed of it. Today, everything is visible, and the worst is that they take pride in being criminals and in their achievements. The criminals have money, clothes, motorcycles, cars, and the youth who work for a living has become a source of ridicule in wide circles. This situation It is catastrophic because it produces more and more criminals. As in any organization, a neighbor brings a neighbor, a friend brings a friend, a brother brings a brother. The parents have lost control of the situation, it is the youth who run the house today. The situation is getting worse, the neighborhood is divided into several groups and the younger generation that used to protect The houses and the neighbors have become a nuisance because conflicts between gangs end in shootings everywhere that endanger the residents. Unfortunately, the police and the courts have not been able to become a deterrent in this equation and I, like every citizen, am very concerned about this."

Archery activity for boys (photo: official website, no)

"The infrastructure for youth delinquency here is very broad and very deep, unfortunately. All the risk factors that can lead a teenager to the criminal world exist here," explains Ayman Sharbagi from the Umm El Fahm municipality, a settlement planner for children and youth at risk from the age of 0-18.

"A teenager without a positive outlook is easy prey for the perpetrators of crime and it feeds itself because it immediately recruits more teenagers. In the Jewish sector, a teenager in his teens prepares himself to be drafted into the army, he has places to hang out, he has frameworks, he has open spaces. With us, if he drops out After school he will, at best, go to work in a building or a restaurant, realizes that he won't be able to build a house, which means he won't get married either, and then someone offers him a thousand shekels in exchange for giving someone a flat tire, and hence the path to entanglement and deterioration is very short."



Sharbagi, director of the national '360' program for at-risk children and youth in Umm El Faham, points out vandalism as a very common problem among bored youth that also affects the general public.

"All property of the Authority is being damaged," he says, adding that drug use and trafficking is a serious problem.

"Surveys showed that a quarter of boys aged 6-18 were exposed to drugs or used drugs."

Another problem that has been added in recent years, according to him, is extortion "One extorts the other. Mobile phones and social media have greatly intensified this problem for us. Boys extort boys, boys extort girls. Girls extort girls. This, cyberbullying, and sexual offenses online. Sometimes a rumor is enough And a very difficult problem begins."

More in Walla!

In the youth villages, budgets are tight, and the level of education is damaged: "in danger of collapse"

To the full article

Sharbagi (Photo: Yoav Itiel)

Iman Sharbagi (photo: official website, no)

Sharbagi adds that "in the face of the very large risk factors, unfortunately the resources are very limited. The family of old no longer exists. The school staff is ultimately measured on education. The teachers cannot deal with all these problems. We do not have a company for community centers, so the community center comes At the expense of other municipal budgets. In general, local resources are limited, and so it turns out that we are only treating the tip of the iceberg, if 40% of our youth are at risk, then we manage to reach maybe a tenth of them."



According to him, he and his partners develop plans themselves, and do not wait for government plans.

"We have had successes. It cannot be that an answer that is suitable for Hadera or Haifa will automatically be suitable for Umm El Fahm, but unfortunately the government ministries are fixed on this matter. There is someone who developed a program in the Ministry of Education or the Ministry of Welfare and he wants to implement it throughout the country, and it is clear to any professional that It doesn't make sense. The solutions can't come from above. The money and supervision should come from above, for approved programs that we develop and adapt to the localities locally."

Juvenile delinquency (photo: official website, Walla system!)

"A worrisome trend is the integration of more and more girls into crime circles in recent years," notes Dr. Nasrin Haddad Haj Yahya, head of the Arab Society Program at the Israel Democracy Institute. "The data indicates an increase in the rates of girls and young women who are involved in crime,"



she explains .

The phenomenon of girls' increasing use of soft and hard drugs compared to recent decades, extortion by criminal organizations due to uninformed use of social networks and the threat of spreading immodest photos. An effort without understanding what world they are entering and probably Corona also had an effect on the scope of the phenomenon, when girls mobilized to financially help their families to survive."

"The biggest mistake was made by the State of Israel"

"The biggest mistake that led to the two and three times higher crime rates in Arab society was made by the State of Israel," says sociologist and criminologist Aryeh Ratner, professor emeritus at the University of Haifa, where he served, among other things, as head of the school of criminology and is currently president of the Kay Academic College of Education. "Forget them, pushed them to the margins.

It was convenient for the country, the lack of governance developed and a 'Wild West' atmosphere was created in which 'the strong wins'.

Instead of going to the police or a court, we resolve conflicts 'alone', which we know what that means, and this reality slaps us in the face today.



"Against the background of this reality, and amid a shortage of teachers and educators, high dropout rates have developed, with child and youth delinquency, some of whom are sent to institutions, which unfortunately are not an ideal place for a young soul to be educated in. The key word is social supervision, and the weaker the youth, the more they are dragged to the street and develop there Non-normative and criminal behavior. We see a lot of vandalism, violence, illegal use of weapons and vehicles, and above all we see that on this platform youth grow up with double and multiple crime rates who, in terms of criminality, are more sophisticated, more ambitious and more violent."



And if that is not enough, one must take into account the consequences that youth delinquency will have on the future of Arab society as a whole in the future, considering that children and youth up to the age of 18 make up about half of the Arab society's population.

"I call on the decision makers to act immediately before we get there. Lest they say we didn't know," Jabarin concludes.

  • news

  • News in Israel

  • Society and welfare

Tags

  • Youth at Risk

  • The Arabic Community

  • The Arab sector

  • Umm al-Fahm

  • Yosef Jabarin

Source: walla

All news articles on 2022-08-18

You may like

News/Politics 2024-02-17T05:23:23.837Z

Trends 24h

News/Politics 2024-03-28T06:04:53.137Z

Latest

© Communities 2019 - Privacy

The information on this site is from external sources that are not under our control.
The inclusion of any links does not necessarily imply a recommendation or endorse the views expressed within them.