A Review Of Homicides In Israel

There has been an uptick in the number of homicides happening in Israel recently, and it deserves a detailed review which the mainstream media is too lazy to examine and too biased to report clearly.

In 2021, the last year for which homicide information is available by the World Bank, Israel’s homicide rate was 1.94 per 100,000, which increased from 1.42 in 2020, a 36% jump. The 1.42 in 2020 figure placed it amongst its neighbors’ average of 1.39 in Turkey, Lebanon, Cyprus and Jordan (no data was available for Lebanon in 2021).

Israel’s jump in 2021 to 1.94 homicides per 100,000 was similar to the murder rate in Montenegro (2.39), Albania (2.31), Armenia (2.18), Canada (2.06), Estonia (1.96), Morocco (1.93), Azerbaijan (1.91), Ghana (1.83) and Algeria (1.57). The United States homicide rate in 2021 was 6.80 per 100,000, or 3.5 times as much as Israel.

The rise in the murder rate shows particular trends.

Breakdown By Sex

The murder rate of males jumped to 3.3 per 100,000 in 2021 from 2.3 the prior year, while the murder rate for women jumped to 0.6 from 0.5 per 100,000, according to the World Bank.

The Israel Observatory on Femicide noted the erratic nature of the data: 21 women murdered in 2020, 16 in 2021 and then 24 in 2022, a 50% jump. The average age of the female victim jumped to 45.6 years old in 2021 due to a spike in matricide cases, where people killed their mothers.

Breakdown By Ethnicity

For 2021, the murdered women were 44% Jewish, 31% Israeli Arab and 19% Druze. In almost every case, the murderer had the same ethnic background as the victim. As in 2021, half of the women murdered in 2022 were Arab and killed by Arabs, mostly family members or former partners.

Overall, there were 126 Arabs murdered in 2021 (110 males and 16 females), almost all killed by fellow Arabs. While various organizations track violence in the Israeli Arab sector Abraham Initiatives, the data isn’t as available for Israeli Jews. Using the 1.94 homicides per 100,000 in an Israeli population of 9.364 million in 2021 would imply a total homicide figure of 182, of which 56 were Jewish. This assumes that the 17 Israelis killed by Arab terrorism in 2021 are not included in the homicide statistics.

While data from different sources are somewhat inconsistent, there is a sharp pattern.

The difference in the rate of murderers between Jews and Arabs is astounding if one considers that Jews make up 76% of the population and Arabs account for 21%. It means that an average Israeli Arab is 8.1x more likely to commit a murder than an Israeli Jew.

The 0.79 homicides per 100,000 amongst Israeli Jews is similar to the homicide rate in Greece (0.85), Germany (0.83), Croatia (0.81), Denmark (0.80), Portugal (0.80), Hungary (0.77), Australia (0.74) and Austria (0.73).

The homicide rate in Israel has taken a worrying trend upwards since 2021, now approaching the rate of Turkey when it used to be closer to Cyprus in 2015. The jump has principally come from Israeli Arabs killing other Arabs in gang violence amongst male victims, and “honor killings” and matricide among female victims. At the same time, the homicide rate of Israeli Jews remains much closer to those in Western Europe.