The Assault in Jaffa and the Importance of Responding to It...

What happened in Jaffa yesterday is not an isolated incident detached from the general atmosphere inciting hatred, nor can it be understood as a fleeting brawl or an outburst arising from coincidence. The racist assault on an Arab family, including children and a pregnant woman, with pepper spray, comes within a general context characterized by escalating violence and incitement against Palestinians in general, and by systematic policies that produce and fuel this violence against Arab citizens.

The Jaffa incident was not an isolated case. Just two weeks ago, a crowd of Maccabi Haifa fans smashed a shawarma shop in Sakhnin after a football match with the Bnei Sakhnin team, in a scene that was political and charged with hatred rather than purely sporting. During the same period, attacks on Arab bus drivers became recurrent, especially in the Jerusalem area, where drivers faced beatings, threats, broken glass, and racist verbal assaults while performing their daily work and struggling for a livelihood through their own sweat.

Undoubtedly, there are many attacks that have not reached the media or the wider public, especially verbal assaults.

We are not facing a series of separate incidents, but rather an integrated scene of authoritarian violence that has become popular, finding fertile ground in political and media rhetoric that demonizes Arabs, presenting them as a security, demographic, or cultural threat. This rhetoric perfectly aligns with the overall trend of the fascist occupation government towards Arabs in the country, and towards all segments of the Palestinian people wherever they are located.

This trend is clearly manifested in the expansion of the policy of "demolish your own home so we don’t force you to pay for the demolition" which the fascist national security minister boasts about implementing in Arab towns, whether in the Negev, the Triangle, or Galilee. Demolition has turned into a political tool of terror, tightening the noose around Arab existence, and pushing people to live in a constant state of fear and instability. Houses are demolished, which means families live in psychological and economic crises, and this is presented to public opinion by ministers as "enforcement of the law," as claimed by the fascist national security minister.

This rhetoric turns into a clear message stating: the Arab is a permanent suspect, their rights are conditional, their protection is not a priority, and they can be assaulted without facing punishment.

In mixed cities specifically like Jaffa, Lod, Ramla, Akko, Haifa, and Nof HaGalil, this rhetoric transforms into direct and charged daily friction. With the increasing official talk about a "demographic threat" and the necessity of "preserving the Jewish character," as in Nof HaGalil, the Arab is redefined not as an equal citizen, but as a surplus in the place, or as a number that must be curbed.

When the human attributes of the Palestinian Arab are systematically stripped away, it becomes easier to assault them, even more accepted in public consciousness. The bus driver is not seen as a worker struggling to earn a living but as a suspicious enemy. And the Arab family in their car is not viewed as a family, but as an unwanted presence. Thus, the spray of pepper, the beatings, and the breaking of things, transition from isolated criminal or administrative acts, to tools within a single system that complements each other between authority and people.

In this context, the demonstration of hundreds that took place in Jaffa after the assault gains special importance, not merely as an emotional reaction, but as a conscious civil and political act. The hundreds of demonstrators taking to the streets formed a reclamation of the public space that racism seeks to poison and seize, and a clear message that the assault on an Arab family will not go unchallenged, and that fear will not turn into a daily fate.

The importance of this demonstration lies not just in the number of participants but in its symbolism; it broke the official narrative that sought to reduce what happened to a spontaneous criminal dispute, and placed the event in its true context as a racist assault resulting from a climate of incitement and racist discrimination policies. In doing so, the demonstration defended not just one family, but the right of an entire community to safety and dignity, and equal presence in their city and homeland.

The danger of what is happening lies not only in the number of assaults but in their normalization, and in the persistent authoritarian conditional efforts to strip them of their racist dimension and to market them as criminal incidents. This misleading characterization not only obscures the truth but provides cover for the continuation of this racist violence, deepening the sense of insecurity among Palestinians within and their feeling of being abandoned in the face of incitement, demolition, and assaults. At the same time, it urges them to defend themselves through protest and not to resort to ignorance and silence.

From Jaffa to Sakhnin, from Jerusalem to the Negev and Nof HaGalil, one clear image emerges: that violence is not spontaneous but produced by a political climate that legitimizes it, turning demographic fear into policy, and policy into everyday behavior in the street. In the face of this, the demonstration in Jaffa appears to be more than just a transient event; it serves as a reminder that responding to the architecture of hatred begins by rejecting silence, by collective existence in the space, and by not allowing a racist assault to pass without exposure and appropriate response.