Is Israel Really a Violent Society?
A random murder in a pizzeria was used by the media to portray Israel as a violent society. Here are the real facts.
The horrific murder of the young man, Yemeno Binyamin Zelka, at the pizza shop where he worked in Petah Tikva on the eve of Independence Day rightly shocked all of Israel. But we must not use this tragedy to unjustly defame Israel and portray it as a violent society—because that is simply not true. And yet, that is precisely what parts of the Israeli media have done.
Journalist Shai Golden, for example, wrote on the front page of the “Israel This Week” supplement in Israel Hayom a passage that amounted to unfounded defamation. According to Golden:
“Violence cuts diagonally across all communities and groups in Israel. It is present in every street, road, and neighborhood, and both its victims and perpetrators come from everywhere… It is terrifying to walk around the streets here in general. People are killed over parking spaces. It doesn’t matter which ethnic group. These are not just thugs—this is Israel. This is us. And violence is a very prominent line in the portrait of who we are.”
Are these truly the face of Israel?
The answer is unequivocal: absolutely not.
When examining violence in the context of the terrible murder in Petah Tikva, the most relevant and reliable indicator is the homicide rate per 100,000 people. Let us examine Israel’s standing in this regard compared to the rest of the world.
- The global average homicide rate is 5.8 per 100,000 people
- The average in developed countries is about 5 per 100,000 people (based on the most recent data available)
If Golden’s claims were accurate, Israel should exhibit higher numbers than these averages. In reality, the situation is quite different: only 3.61 homicides per 100,000 people. In other words, significantly fewer people are murdered in Israel than in the world at large—and even fewer than in developed countries.
Now to address the “elephant in the room”: Golden claims that “violence cuts across all communities and groups in Israel.” This is a particularly egregious misrepresentation, because a breakdown of homicide data reveals a very different picture.
- The homicide rate among Arab citizens of Israel stands at 4.9 per 100,000 people, slightly below the developed-world average
- The homicide rate among Jewish citizens stands at just 0.67 per 100,000 people
That is a ratio of roughly 1:13 between homicide rates in Arab society and Jewish society.
A report by the Taub Center clarifies this further:
The homicide rate among Jews in Israel is among the lowest in the developed world, while the rate among Arabs is closer to the developed-world average. In any case, the combined national rate still places Israel well below the developed-world average—and certainly far below the global average.
Golden does not stop at homicide claims. He also asserts that “it is terrifying to walk the streets here.” This claim, too, can be tested. The OECD Personal Security Index, which measures people’s sense of safety walking alone at night, shows that 80% of Israelis report feeling safe, compared to an average of 74% in developed countries—and even lower worldwide.
This is consistent with Israel’s relatively low rates of sexual violence, theft, and burglary compared to other developed nations.
So how did Golden arrive at the conclusion that Israel is a violent society across all sectors, that “it is terrifying to walk the streets,” and that “violence is a defining feature of who we are”?
This reflects a conditioned reflex in parts of the Israeli mainstream media—to disparage Israel under virtually any circumstances: Israeli society, its government, its police, its military, and its security services.
In fact, what we learned from this tragic murder is the exact opposite of Golden’s claim. The traffic jams surrounding the mourning tent, as people from across the country came to pay their respects; the immediate public mobilization to support the victim’s family, both through donations and through the commitment of Pizza Hut Israel franchisees to continue paying his salary to his family indefinitely; and the widespread national shock—these all demonstrate that Israeli society is the opposite of what Golden described: a healthy, value-driven, and deeply solidaristic society that is repulsed by violence and firmly rejects it. There is a profound gap between this reality and the way it is portrayed by some journalists.
I presented these data to Shai Golden and asked why he rushed to defame Israeli society without justification. His response was:
“You see violence as a statistical matter; I see it as a matter of feeling. People don’t feel safe walking the streets, and that’s what the article is about.”
It is worth noting that not long ago, Golden held a different journalistic stance—one rooted in a sense of connection and goodwill toward Israeli society, even stating that he had taken it upon himself to view the people of Israel favorably. That position seems to have faded. One wonders what that earlier Shai Golden would have thought of the harsh claims made by the Shai Golden of today.