Six construction workers died last month in Israel, bringing the number of such fatalities to 23 so far this year. The number of fatalities in 2016 totaled 49, according to data compiled by attorney Hadas Tagari. Had Tagari not rallied to the cause, few in Israel would know about the extent of the country's workplace accident problem. Each case would have continued to merit at best a short item on the radio about a nameless worker killed on a construction site.

Few Israelis, if any, know that most workplace accidents occur in the construction sector and that most of those killed or injured are Israeli Arab citizens, Palestinians from the West Bank and Gaza, and a handful of migrant laborers from abroad. Almost two years ago, Tagari began collecting the names and identities of the dead, one by one, as well as the location of their fatal accidents. She documented the names of the construction companies involved and the reason for the accidents, whether negligence by employers or the systemic failure of all those tasked with supervising the construction sector and preventing workplace accidents.

“Most of those killed are Arab Israelis and Palestinians from the territories,” Tagari told Al-Monitor, adding that this is probably why no one had bothered to count them. According to the data she compiled for 2016, one-third of the dead were West Bank or Gaza Palestinians, one-third of them Arab Israelis and the remaining one-third almost equally divided between Jews and non-Jews, the majority of them immigrants from the former Soviet Union.

“One day, in November 2015, I read that three workers had been killed in three separate accidents after falling from heights. I knew that we wouldn’t find out anything more about who they were, where they were killed, how, what company was operating the site, and especially that no one would check,” Tagari said. “It’s clearly linked to the fact that they’re Arabs, but there’s also a whole system of powerful economic interests at play.”