On Oct. 2, the Arab Higher Monitoring Committee called upon the Arab population in Israel to go on strike the next day in order to protest a spike in murder rates plaguing their communities. A video clip posted on social media Oct. 2 told the whole story in 85 seconds. It documented two or three masked young men firing bursts of automatic fire into the air from a rooftop adjacent to a family gathering in the northern Israeli Bedouin village of Tuba Zangaria. The uninterrupted echoing bursts of ammunition were clearly reminiscent of armed Islamic Jihad or Hamas combatants in the Gaza Strip.

Also on that same day, a surveillance camera in the Arab village of Fureidis caught a masked man firing off automatic bursts at a car on a street bustling with people. The footage showed a frightened schoolboy running for cover from the shooting, which slightly injured a woman who was taken to Rambam Hospital in the nearby city of Haifa. Several hours later, in the central Arab town of Kfar Qassem, an armed man broke into a local business and shot a 26-year-old woman at close range, slightly injuring her.

September was the deadliest month ever for Israel’s Arab communities at the hands of Arab criminals. According to data compiled by the Aman (Arabic for “security”) Center dedicated to fighting violence in Arab society, 13 Arab Israelis were murdered in one month, bringing the total this year to date to 56 men and 11 women. The latest murder victim on the long list was Ibrahim Mahamid, 23, a resident of the town of Umm al-Fahm, shot dead from a passing car Sept. 26.

An hour prior to the murder, Umm al-Fahm Mayor Samir Mahameed took part in a conference convened in Jerusalem for Arab mayors by the Federation of Local Authorities to discuss the eradication of the surging violence in Arab society. The event was attended by the director general of the Ministry of Public Security, former Deputy Police Commissioner Moshe Edri, as well as by Deputy Commissioner Jamal Hakrush, who heads the police administration tasked with improving policing in Arab communities. Hakrush, himself an Arab citizen, was named to the job in 2016 in order to advance the deployment of police stations in Arab towns and villages, thus far with few impressive results.