JERUSALEM, 6 June 2005 — A 3-year-old girl shot in a botched mob hit, a teen strangled in a random attack on her way to the mall, a serial killer held for beating and burning four homeless men — a recent spate of seemingly senseless violence has sparked a wave of hysteria across Israel.
Prime Minister Ariel Sharon dedicated most of yesterday’s weekly Cabinet meeting to the crime wave, promising tough action, while the mass circulation Yediot Ahronot daily launched an anti-crime crusade.
Relatives of four of the recent victims posed for Yediot’s front page yesterday, holding photos of their slain kin, and wrote to Sharon that “mad violence” in Israel has made “everyone crazed with fear.” While Israelis are used to dealing with deaths in the conflict with the Palestinians, violent crime has been relatively low.
However, the recent series of brutal killings has set Israelis on edge. For the past week, newspapers have been filled with pictures of the dead and relatives are interviewed on the radio. The trigger was the killing in late May of 15-year-old girl Maayan Sapir, who was randomly attacked and strangled while walking to a mall in the quiet city of Rehovot near Tel Aviv last week. The suspect is a youth who was on a furlough from juvenile detention center, apparently high at the time from sniffing glue.
Other recent victims included a 3-year-old girl caught in the crossfire during a botched mob hit outside a prison in the central town of Ramle, and an 81-year-old man set on fire by a woman who owed him money. Several teens have been stabbed to death outside nightclubs in arguments over seemingly minor issues.
Israelis were also shocked by last week’s arrest of an alleged serial killer suspected in the random killings of four homeless men in the northern port city of Haifa. Sharon promised action yesterday. Police say there were 71 murders in the first five months of the year, a 35 percent increase over the same period in 2004. At yesterday’s meeting, Police Chief Moshe Karadi asked the government to boost police funding and scrap the planned firing of 2,000 officers.
