Ayman Odeh was 16 when he was called in for a series of chats with the Shin Bet security service about his political activism. In his 40s, he was Israeli Jews' favorite Arab politician. Now he is bowing out of party politics, but not because he has abandoned the dream of a better future.

In the wake of the Hamas attack on October 7th, Palestinian Citizens of Israel and residents of occupied Jerusalem are being targeted over their social media activity. Any expressions of Palestinian identity, or support for Gaza, is getting people fired from their jobs, expelled from universities, arrested, and doxxed online by right-wing Israeli groups.

The belated budget will reach 2,500 students beginning in November. The budget for the student-led program intends to assist with improving the poor state of Hebrew language studies in Arab schools.

Who will stop the ongoing massacres in Arab communities? Itamar Ben-Gvir? A fascist and poisonous government? Imagine if such a massacre had taken place in a Jewish town: All of Israel would have risen to its feet. In the meantime, Arab society is soaking in its own blood.

A few years ago, an Israeli historian named Ilan Pappé published “The Forgotten Palestinians: A History of the Palestinians in Israel,” which highlighted the background and context of the Palestinians left in what became Israel.

At the Israeli film awards ceremony on Monday Watfa Jabali stood on the red carpet alongside actress Samar Qupty. Jabali wore black; Qupty wore a bloodstained white dress. It was a quiet protest.

Teachers bump into their students at funerals, explain to nine-year-olds why the neighbor was shot and fear they could be next. When an entire society faces a crime epidemic, teachers get another job they didn't sign up for.

The best way of ending the intensifying criminal activities among 48 Arab communities is directly linked to the overall decolonization and liberation of historical Palestine.

Who will stop the ongoing massacres in Arab communities? Itamar Ben-Gvir? A fascist and poisonous government? Imagine if such a massacre had taken place in a Jewish town: All of Israel would have risen to its feet. In the meantime, Arab society is soaking in its own blood.

Poverty and crime enter the vacuum that is created when the state abandons its citizens. Crime is the result, not the cause, of the lack of governance. If the Kahanist government continues in this vein, it is liable to bring about the collapse of the Arab local governments and to reap the chaos of poverty and crime.

MK Ayman Odeh was seemingly punched or grabbed by the neck by a Border Police officer as hundreds protest outside Finance Ministry over freezing of funds for Arab municipalities. One reginal council head was detained by police.

For two weeks now, I haven’t managed to relate to the difficult and even deadly events in our land. They are not unprecedented, but there is a sense that the violence is escalating. The tyranny and injustice were always there, but there were checks and balances, albeit limited, such as the High Court of Justice and international public opinion.

Despite criticisms of the body, Palestinian citizens view efforts to outlaw the High Follow-Up Committee as a dangerous attack on their political rights.

Thousands of Arab and Jewish protesters came together on Sunday night in Tel Aviv to call on the government to combat the spiraling violence that has claimed 141 lives so far this year in the Arab community. ‘We’re citizens of Israel, we shouldn’t be so afraid to go out,’ says one demonstrator.

28 Israeli Arabs were murdered in July, out of 33 total murders in the country. Police attribute the spiraling crisis to officers having to deal with protests against the government’s judicial overhaul, but analysis of the data suggests otherwise.

With over 130 murders this year alone, violent crime within Israel’s Palestinian community is reaching new levels and grabbing headlines. But while the murder rate is unprecedented, the crime spree has been a long time in the making.

Abandoned by the Israeli government, the country’s Palestinian citizens live at the mercy of organized crime.

The number of Arab Israeli women between 30 and 34 years old with a bachelor's degree or higher now stands at 25 percent. And it's not just young women either.

On June 24, Palestinian leaders inside Israel held a national protest to address the recent spike in violence in their communities. They say the rise in crime is the direct result of the Israeli government empowering violent criminals.

​The fixation on policing has funneled us into a debate that avoids the real roots of the crisis of gun violence among Palestinian citizens ofIsrael. More than any other issue, personal safety is now the number one concern of Palestinian citizens, with some feeling they can hardly walk down the street, visit family members, or send kids to school without worrying if they will make it back home unharmed.

Led by Prime Minister Netanyahu himself, the committee that will deal with the wave of violent crime in Arab society will also include far-right representatives such as Bezalel Smotrich, Itamar Ben-Gvir and Orit Strock.

There was a momentary shock. Benzi Gopstein, the chair of the organization Lehava (“for the prevention of assimilation in the Holy Land”), a student of Meir Kahane, is advising National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir on police and security matters.

“Massacre,” “Yafia.” These two words don’t belong together in my mind. Nevertheless, I worry that time will do its part. These words will yet come together in my brain and become a natural pairing, just as with every other massacre we have experienced. Reality is cruel, and so is language.

This government of poison and destruction has left no doubts about its intentions to abandon the Arabs to organized crime and violence, without a drop of sympathy or compassion. This is a government in which Police Commissioner Kobi Shabtai once told National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir in a private conversation that “they murder each other, that’s the Arab mentality.”

I got a push notification from an app. Something had happened. “Five people were shot to death in the town of Yafia near Nazareth ... Not long before, in Kafr Kana, a 3-year-old girl was seriously wounded by gunfire and a 30-year-old man was mortally wounded.”.

The deadly shooting followed a previous murder on Tuesday, when a 50-year-old man was shot dead in the northern city of Umm al-Fahm, and a 50-year-old woman was lightly wounded.

The bills, submitted by Likud lawmaker Amit Halevy, seek to set stricter criteria for obtaining a teaching license. If legislated, the bill would require the Education Ministry to conduct a security background check on every potential teacher.

Samira Azzam defied tradition by starting a party that fielded the first-ever, all-woman slate of candidates for a local council in a Druze town. Her achievement, and that of other Druze and Arab local politicians, is the result of a grassroots movement.

Without work, education or direction, nearly a third of Israeli Arab young adults find themselves without a purpose.

Israel’s protest movement has avoided an explicit call for a truly inclusive democracy. Dayar Omari’s killing is proof it shouldn’t.

If the Netanyahu government secures a forever majority, it will bolster the argument that an apartheid regime reigns between the river and the sea.

Kan 11, the public broadcaster, launched a series of reports this week by Eran Singer and Roy Ettinger titled “Palestinians Blue-and-White.” The first item set out to examine “the growing extremism in Arab society in Israel” and asked, “What went wrong?”

Facing rude stares on the train, showing your ID everywhere and staying indoors during times of violence. Arab Israelis tell Haaretz about how they cope with the country's worsening intercommunal relations.

Israel remains one of the most impoverished states in the developed world, according to 2021 poverty report.

The Education Ministry’s systematic disregard of studies, surveys and state comptroller reports has buried hope for education for coexistence.

The fact that the attorney general’s office approved Education Minister Yoav Gallant’s move some months ago to intervene in the Bible studies curriculum and remove clips from the satirical program “The Jews are Coming” from the ministry’s website for Bible studies teachers, is additional evidence that Israel’s democracy is in crisis.