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5 dead in gang-related shooting near Nazareth as government aims to stem wave of Arab-Israeli killings
(JTA) — Five people were killed in a gang-related shooting at a car wash near Nazareth in northern Israel, continuing a rising wave of violent deaths in Arab-Israeli areas and prompting increasingly urgent calls for action to address the bloodshed.
The incident on Thursday was the most fatal criminal attack in Israel since 2009, according to the publication Ynet, and comes amid a string of killings in Arab-Israeli communities. Since the beginning of the year, 97 Arab-Israelis have been killed by violent means, compared to 35 in the same period last year, according to the Times of Israel. In protest of Thursday’s shooting, an umbrella Arab-Israeli leadership organization called a general strike for tomorrow.
The shooting in the town of Yafa an-Naseriyye was reportedly related to a longstanding feud between two Arab crime families, though bystanders may also have been killed. The victims range in age from 15 to 29, according to Haaretz. The previous night, a man was killed in a separate shooting in Nazareth, and there were other shootings on Thursday as well.
For years, Arab-Israelis have lobbied for the Israeli government to take crime in their cities more seriously and to devote more resources to stemming the tide of killings. Those calls have grown louder this year as the death toll has skyrocketed.
Arab-Israelis have also prompted debate this week over who will oversee the effort to reduce violence in Arab-Israeli municipalities. The politician in charge of the police response to the crime wave is Itamar Ben-Gvir, the far-right national security minister, who said Monday that he would select a point person to focus on the issue. He has also pushed for the creation of a 2000-member national guard under his authority, a proposal Israel’s government advanced earlier this year.
On Thursday, Ben Gvir visited the site of the car wash shooting and, Ynet reported, said there had been “decades of abandonment and a lack of governance that have blown up in our faces.” He additionally called Arab-Israeli society the “Wild West.” Police commissioner Kobi Shabtai also came to the scene, where he was greeted with protesters calling him a “murderer.”
Ben-Gvir demanded that the Shin Bet intelligence agency get involved in the response to the killings. The Shin Bet is known for its operations against and interrogations of Palestinian terror suspects, and involving the agency in combating the crime wave has been a controversial prospect among Arab Israelis.
Arab-Israeli politicians have said they mistrust Ben-Gvir’s politics and intentions, and they have instead appealed to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to take charge of the issue. In a meeting with Arab-Israeli lawmakers who are usually among his most outspoken opponents, Netanyahu promised to appoint a steering committee, which he would chair, to address the crime wave.
“In order to defeat criminal organization, trust is needed, and we have no trust in Ben Gvir, the racist,” read a statement earlier this week from the Arab-Israeli Hadash-Taal Party, according to the Times of Israel. “A proper government would have fired him a long time ago.”
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Israel’s Netanyahu Hopes to ‘Taper’ Israel Off US Military Aid in Next Decade
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu speaks to the press on Capitol Hill, Washington, DC, July 8, 2025. REUTERS/Evelyn Hockstein
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in an interview published on Friday that he hopes to “taper off” Israeli dependence on US military aid in the next decade.
Netanyahu has said Israel should not be reliant on foreign military aid but has stopped short of declaring a firm timeline for when Israel would be fully independent from Washington.
“I want to taper off the military within the next 10 years,” Netanyahu told The Economist. Asked if that meant a tapering “down to zero,” he said: “Yes.”
Netanyahu said he told President Donald Trump during a recent visit that Israel “very deeply” appreciates “the military aid that America has given us over the years, but here too we’ve come of age and we’ve developed incredible capacities.”
In December, Netanyahu said Israel would spend 350 billion shekels ($110 billion) on developing an independent arms industry to reduce dependency on other countries.
In 2016, the US and Israeli governments signed a memorandum of understanding for the 10 years through September 2028 that provides $38 billion in military aid, $33 billion in grants to buy military equipment and $5 billion for missile defense systems.
Israeli defense exports rose 13 percent last year, with major contracts signed for Israeli defense technology including its advanced multi-layered aerial defense systems.
US Republican Senator Lindsey Graham, a staunch Israel supporter and close ally of Trump, said on X that “we need not wait ten years” to begin scaling back military aid to Israel.
“The billions in taxpayer dollars that would be saved by expediting the termination of military aid to Israel will and should be plowed back into the US military,” Graham said. “I will be presenting a proposal to Israel and the Trump administration to dramatically expedite the timetable.”
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In Rare Messages from Iran, Protesters ask West for Help, Speak of ‘Very High’ Death Toll
Protests in Tehran. Photo: Iran Photo from social media used in accordance with Clause 27a of the Copyright Law, via i24 News
i24 News – Speaking to Western media from beyond the nationwide internet blackout imposed by the Islamic regime, Iranian protesters said they needed support amid a brutal crackdown.
“We’re standing up for a revolution, but we need help. Snipers have been stationed behind the Tajrish Arg area [a neighborhood in Tehran],” said a protester in Tehran speaking to the Guardian on the condition of anonymity. He added that “We saw hundreds of bodies.”
Another activist in Tehran spoke of witnessing security forces firing live ammunition at protesters resulting in a “very high” number killed.
On Friday, TIME magazine cited a Tehran doctor speaking on condition of anonymity that just six hospitals in the capital recorded at least 217 killed protesters, “most by live ammunition.”
Speaking to Reuters on Saturday, Setare Ghorbani, a French-Iranian national living in the suburbs of Paris, said that she became ill from worry for her friends inside Iran. She read out one of her friends’ last messages before losing contact: “I saw two government agents and they grabbed people, they fought so much, and I don’t know if they died or not.”
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Report: US Increasingly Regards Iran Protests as Having Potential to Overthrow Regime
United States President Donald J Trump in White House in Washington, DC, USA, on Thursday, December 18, 2025. Photo: Aaron Schwartz via Reuters Connect.
i24 News – The assessment in Washington of the strength and scope of the Iran protests has shifted after Thursday’s turnout, with US officials now inclined to grant the possibility that this could be a game changer, Axios reported on Friday.
“The protests are serious, and we will continue to monitor them,” an unnamed senior US official was quoted as saying in the report.
Iran was largely cut off from the outside world on Friday after the Islamic regime blacked out the internet to curb growing unrest, as videos circulating on social media showed buildings ablaze in anti-government protests raging across the country.
US President Donald Trump warned the Ayatollahs of a strong response if security forces escalate violence against protesters.
“We’re watching it very closely. If they start killing people like they have in the past, I think they’re going to get hit very hard by the United States,” Trump told reporters when asked about the unrest in Iran.
The latest reported death toll is at 51 protesters, including nine children.