Three killed in under an hour, including a well-known rabbi, as violent crime surges

Three people were killed within a single hour early Wednesday morning — a well-known rabbi and two young Arab Israeli men — as violent crime continued to rock the country.

Amos Guetta, a 75-year-old rabbi from Netanya, was found with stab wounds at around 5:40 a.m. in the yeshiva where he lived and taught. Medics rushed him in critical condition to a hospital, but he succumbed to his wounds en route.

Further north in Shfaram, a bus driver was shot dead in a killing reportedly linked to a bitter dispute between two families in the Arab city. A young man from the northern Bedouin village of Basmat Tab’un was gunned down half an hour later outside a shopping center in Yagur, south of Haifa.

The spate of killings brought this week’s homicide death toll to eight, seven of them Arabs, continuing an especially bloody four days amid a years-long surge in violent crime.

National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir, who oversees the police in his ministerial role, mourned the death of the rabbi but declined to comment on the two Arab citizens killed the same hour.

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“This is a shocking and grave act, and the Israel Police will act with determination in order to capture the murderer, determine the circumstances of the incident and prosecute him to the fullest extent, even if this man is mentally ill as it seems,” the far-right minister wrote on Facebook.

Police launched investigations into all three killings. So far, they have only arrested a suspect in the fatal stabbing of Guetta.

The suspected perpetrator is a man in his 20s who formerly studied under the rabbi, law enforcement said. Officers launched a manhunt and nabbed him in downtown Netanya, after he allegedly fled the scene of the stabbing.

“The murderer stabbed the rabbi while he was lying helpless in his bed. He lived in a kolel. The stabber screamed and went berserk, pulled out a kitchen knife and stabbed the rabbi in the stomach,” a witness told Channel 12 news, adding that he also tried to stab Guetta’s assistant, who managed to escape.

Police said they were preparing for Guetta’s funeral, expected to draw thousands of mourners Wednesday evening to Netanya.

Bus driver killed, another shot dead near shopping mall

At around the same time as the rabbi’s violent death Wednesday morning, a 24-year-old bus driver was shot and killed in Shfaram.

The victim, Ali Suwaed, was found with bullet wounds in a parking lot in the northern Arab city. Medics pronounced him dead at the scene.

According to Channel 12, the killing was linked to a bloody feud between two families in the area.

The slain bus driver’s Suwaed family has for several years been at odds with the Khalidi family. The bitter dispute began between criminals, but has since expanded to affect relatives without known gangland ties.

According to Nas Radio, a Nazareth-based Arabic station, police found a burning vehicle in the city the night before and are investigating whether it was linked to the early-morning shooting.

Half an hour later, another young man was shot and killed in his car in a parking lot near a shopping center in Yagur, south of Haifa.

The 21-year-old victim, who has not yet been identified, was pronounced dead at the scene. According to Arab outlets, he is from Basmat Tab’un, a small Bedouin village in northern Israel.

Channel 12 reported that the man was killed in revenge for Tuesday’s deadly car bombing that killed a senior crime figure in Kiryat Haim, a northern suburb of Haifa.

The slain target of Tuesday’s blast, 50-year-old Rabia Abu Haikal, was a prominent mobster in the powerful Nasser Hariri gang, whose ongoing rivalry with the Nazareth-based Bakri criminal organization has fueled hiking violence in the north.

According to the Abraham Initiatives group, which tracks Arab sector homicides, 147 members of the community have been killed so far this year, after the minority saw its deadliest year on record in 2025, with 252 killed in violent circumstances.