TEL AVIV, July 6 — In the four years since her father was fatally stabbed near the entrance of their home in northern Israel, 10-year-old Shireen has carried the burden of grief on her tiny shoulders.

“I loved him so much, I felt safe with him,” Shireen, whose name has been changed, told AFP in the seaside town of Jisr al-Zarqa.

“When I found out that I lost him, I was very sad because he was a part of me. It was very difficult for me,” the eldest of four siblings said.

Shireen is one of scores of young people grappling with the devastating impact of spiralling violent crime in Israel’s Arab minority community—driven predominantly by criminal gangs, family feuds, easy access to firearms and what the community decries as a lack of police enforcement.

So far this year, more than 140 Arab citizens of Israel have been killed in such violence according to the Abraham Initiatives coexistence organisation—a 12 per cent rise over the same period last year.

If that rate continues, the community will surpass the unprecedented 252 killings recorded in 2025.

The assailant who killed Shireen’s father in what the family described as a drunken random attack was a minor and not previously known to them. He was arrested and sentenced to prison.

For young people, the consequences of losing a parent are profound and long-lasting.

“Unfortunately, there’s over 232 children who lost a parent in the Arab society only last year because of the crime and the violence,” said Hadar Kess, the founder and CEO of Sunflowers, an Israeli organisation supporting young people who have lost parents like Shireen.

In Jewish Israeli society, Kess said that children who had lost a parent were four times more likely to get arrested, and 13 times more likely to drop out of school.

In Arab society, she said, the risk of falling into crime was much higher, with communities generally poorer and the particularly high murder rate driving cycles of revenge.