Behind the Headlines a Wave of Violence

Ten persons have been murdered, shops and a discotheque have been gutted by fire. These have been the tragic results of a string of four crimes that took place in Israel recently. The bitter fruit of these events has brought Israelis to ask themselves whether the country is entering upon an unprecedented era of violence.

In Netanya – the flourishing resort city north of Tel Aviv, a 24-year-old soldier, Avraham Ezra, is accused of throwing a hand grenade into a discotheque, killing six people and injuring another 26, Ezra has a long record of delinquency and hooliganism, having spent a good deal of time in prison for related offenses. Recently, he was inducted into the army under a special program designed to reappraise the eligibility of persons originally exempted from service on grounds of unsuitability.

In Petach Tikva – one of the first modern Jewish settlements in the land of Israel and now a city of 100,000–a 21-year-old unemployed youth went berserk and killed three of his friends, The youth, Yosi Padova, armed with Uzi submachine gun, crashed into a friend’s apartment and gunned down three of the six people watching TV there. In Jerusalem, a shop-keeper was shot to death by a masked robber, as his 12-year-old daughter looked on, when he refused to hand over the day’s take. In Ashdod one of the most successful new towns in the south, six shops were burned to the ground as a result of a mysterious blast.

INCIDENTS EVOKE CONCERN

There seems to be no apparent connection between the four events apart from the fact that they occurred within the same brief time span. Nevertheless, the wave of unconnected incidents has provoked some profound questioning among the press and public. Do they indicate a new era of brutality and violence? The anxiety increases when it is remembered how many civilians in Israel are equipped with personal weapons, available to help them defend their families against Arab terrorists.

Of the four crimes, the one which deserves the most careful attention is the murder in Netanya. Was it an isolated incident or the reflection of a systematic process? Police Chief Shaul Rosolio described the murder in the discotheque as a reflection of Israeli society’s failure to deal with delinquent youngsters, Rosolio added that the discotheque bombing should serve as a warning that fringe youth could resort to acts of violence “beyond what we think credible.” Speaking to newsmen, Rosolio rejected the idea that a wave of organized violence was sweeping the country. He warned against what he called “developing theories about the existence of an organized underworld.”

Pubic opinion, however, has not been entirely convinced by his pronouncement. Newspapers have published articles and analyses aiming to prove that things are not as simple or “small-time” as Rosolio had described them, Newsmen claim that the murder in the discotheque could be connected with protection rackets. Protection, in its Israeli underworld connotation is said to mean an enforced watchman service in the entertainment centers and in the open street markets.

According to several articles in the press, the underworld offers such services in exchange for permanent payment, Those who refuse to be “protected” by the underworld guardsmen find themselves under a rough pressure; their night-clubs are prone to staged fights and nuisances created by uninvited guests; they receive threatening letters, and their enterprises are the targets of mysterious burnings and blasts. The police have consistently maintained that in Israel there is no organized crime in the American sense of the term. They tend to deny theories expounding the use of an organized pressure or violence by the underworld.

Rosolio has pledged that the police will give top priority to fighting violence, but, he added, this was a problem for society as a whole, Rosolio described the recent events as “a manifestation of the violence in relations between ordinary people–in their way of expression and of talking, and as a means for achieving illegal objectives.” In this sense, Israel did not differ from developed countries in the West, he said. Israelis by-and-large believe they have enough problems without strong-arm crimes and the “protection” racket. They want to believe, despite newspaper reports to the contrary, that the four tragic events were isolated incidents and not the signs of a dangerous phenomenon.