“Paying With Our Blood”: Batya Kalish and Bashar Iraqi on Crime, Policing, and the Breaking Point in Arab Israeli Communities

In this episode of the Tel Aviv Diary podcast, I sit down with Batya Kalish, director of the Social Venture Fund for Jewish-Arab Equality and Shared Society (SVF), and Bashar Iraqi, a Palestinian Arab citizen of Israel from Tira who is active in efforts to combat crime inside Arab society and is involved with the community initiative Qulnuna. Together, we try to understand what is driving the relentless wave of murders in Arab Israeli towns and mixed cities—and what can realistically be done to stop it.We begin with a wide-angle look at Arab society in Israel: real progress in education and higher education, an emerging middle class, and striking gains for Arab women in academia—alongside severe gaps in municipal services, chronic discrimination, and a growing vacuum of state capacity. Bashar traces the longer arc from 1948 through martial law and the ruptures of recent decades, arguing that crime did not explode “out of nowhere,” but accelerated as illegal weapons spread, trust collapsed, and enforcement became inconsistent. Batya adds a structural layer: financial exclusion, predatory loan-sharking, and the recruitment pool created by tens of thousands of young people who are not in employment, education, or training—conditions that allow organized crime to function like a parallel authority.The conversation turns blunt. Bashar describes a reality where bullets are heard at night “as if living in Gaza,” where victims are often uninvolved family members or bystanders, and where the state’s ability to act is clear—when it chooses to act. We debate policing, discrimination within the system, and the political context, including the impact of governments that briefly prioritized the issue—and those that did not. We end with a hard question: can anything change soon? Bashar argues that participation, civic power, and equal enforcement are essential, and that both societies will ultimately have to build not just coexistence, but a better way of living together. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit marcschulman.substack.com/subscribe