“They celebrate the death of my family”: how Iran's bombs expose the division in Israel between Arabs and Jews

The four victims were identified as Kasem's daughter, Manar Khatib, 45; His two granddaughters, Shada, 20, and Hala, 13, and his aunt, Manal Khatib, 41.

They had managed to reach the two safe reinforced rooms of the house they shared, but the ballistic missile impacted them directly.

They lived in Tamra, an Arab majority in northern Israel.

Minutes after his death, a video on the Internet appeared. He showed the Iranian missiles furrowing the sky.

While the rockets descended on Tamra, there could be a voice shouted in Hebrew: “On the village, on the village!”

“May your village burn,” said another group of people, singing, screaming and applauding.

“They sang about what happened to my family,” says Kasem in a low voice, surrounded by relatives in a vigil.

The video, which shows Israelis singing a common anti -árabe song, often replicated by ultra -nationalist Jews, has been widely condemned in Israel, and President Isaac Herzog described him as “atrocious and shameful.”

But there are more reasons why Kasem and the Tamra community are outraged by what happened.

Here, as in many Arab majority communities in Israel, there are no public anti -aircraft shelters for its 38,000 inhabitants.

As a comparison, the nearby city of Karmiel, with a Jewish majority and 55,000 inhabitants, has 126 public shelters.

Tamra residents have been warning about this disparity for a long time.

Located in northern Israel, about 10 kilometers east of the city of Haifa and 25 kilometers south of the border with Lebanon, the city has been vulnerable to the rockets fired by the Lebanese group Hezbollah, backed by Iran.

In October 2024, a rocket fired by the group seriously injured a woman.

In all Israel, approximately a quarter of the population does not have access to adequate refuge. But in non -Jewish towns, the figure is almost half of the inhabitants, according to a 2018 report of the Comptroller of the State of Israel, the most recent data available.

“For many decades, the local Arab authorities have received a lower state financing in various areas, including emergency preparation,” says Lital Piller, from the Institute of Democracy Studies of Israel.

Where there are shelters, he adds, “they are scarce, they are poorly maintained and, often, they are not suitable for prolonged stays.”

The BBC contacted Israel's Ministry of Defense to request comments, but did not get an answer.

Israeli Arabs, many of whom prefer to be called Palestinian citizens of Israel, represent a fifth of the country's population.

By law, they have the same rights as Jewish citizens, but they usually complain about state discrimination and to be treated as second -class citizens.

After the Gulf War of 1990-1991, when Iraqi missiles impacted Tel Aviv and Haifa, the Israeli government demanded that all the new residential buildings have a safe room reinforced, or Mamad, as they are known.

But Arab communities often face harsh planning restrictions, which causes constructions without regulation and without bunkers, according to activists.

About 40% of Tamra's homes have their own security room, according to local authorities, which forces most residents to run to neighbors' houses to share it.

In many cases, due to the brief warning period, this is not possible.

“The gaps are huge,” says Ilan Amit, from the Arab-Jewish center for empowerment, equality and cooperation, which works on the construction of shelters in Arab communities.

“I live in Jerusalem. Each building has an antimile shelter. Each neighborhood has a public antimile shelter,” he adds.

At dusk in Tamra, resident phones are lit simultaneously with a strident alert: “They must remain close to a protected area.”

Soon the mermaids sound, and residents, just out of the trauma of Saturday's attack, panic.

Mothers pick up their children and people run up on a shouting street.

Several families are crowded in the security room of a house.

Some cry, others smile, others twist.

A man closes his eyes and prays.

Explosions are heard after explosions in the sky.

The housing problem is even more serious in the Arab Beduine communities of Israel, many of which live in Néguev desert villages that are not recognized by the Israeli government, so they have not built shelters.

The only victim of the climbing of hostilities between Israel and Iran in April 2024 was a young woman from one of these communities, which was seriously injured and spent a year hospitalized after being reached in the head by fragments of an Iranian missile.

The lack of shelters is also a frequent problem in some of the poorest Jewish communities in Israel, in areas such as the southern Tel Aviv.

A new survey conducted by the Hebrew University revealed that 82.7% of Jewish Israeli supports the attack on Iran, but 67.9% of the Arab Israeli opposes.

In addition, 69.2% of the Arab Israelis said they were afraid of attacks, while 25.1% expressed despair.

“Arab society feels careless and abandoned,” says Amit.

“There are huge shortcomings in education and employment. There are huge deficiencies in the availability of shelters.”

Adel Khatib, municipal official of Tamra, says: “Since this happened, anger can be felt.”

“We have no basic needs covered,” he adds, “most Arab communities lack community centers or buildings for culture and activities.”

42.4% of the Arab population lived in 2023 below the poverty threshold, more than double the proportion of the general population of Israel, according to official Israeli statistics.

In recent years they have tried to close these gaps.

In 2021, the previous Government of Israel presented a five -year development plan for Arab society.

“We were in the midst of a great advance in socioeconomic development, reducing the gaps in education, higher education and employment,” says Amit.

But the current ruling coalition of Israel, the most radical in its history, has gradually reduced the financing of that plan, redirecting money to other sources.

Some of these cuts occurred when the government adjusted the budgets to combat the current war in Gaza, which began in response to the cross -border attack led by Hamas against Israel on October 7, 2023, in which some 1,200 people died and another 251 were taken as hostages.

“This government has simply been putting obstacles to this five -year plan, preventing the implementation of much,” adds Amit.

“During the last year and a half, the Arab society has been found between the sword and the wall: on the one hand, they suffer the policies of the current government and, on the other, they see their brothers and sisters in Gaza and the West Bank suffer because of the war,” he says.

Outside the ruins of the family home, Mohamed Osman, a 16 -year -old neighbor, says: “Everyone is angry and sad.”

Speaking of Shada, 20, he says: “He studied his whole life. He wanted to be the best. Her father is a lawyer and she wanted to be like him. All those dreams simply vanished.”

“They were the best image of a happy family (…) when I imagine them, I imagine the fragments I saw of them,” he adds.

In a vigil prior to the funeral, dozens of members of the community gathered, greeting themselves with handshakes, sharing coffee and tea, and crying in silence.

“The bombs do not distinguish between Arabs and Jews,” says Kasem. “We must end this war. We must end it now.”

Subscribe here To our new newsletter to receive every Friday a selection of our best content of the week.

And remember that you can receive notifications in our app. Download the latest version and act.