We were shocked to see how Yemanu Binyamin Zelka, a 21-year-old pizzeria worker, was beaten and stabbed to death on Yom Ha’atzmaut. It was all caught on camera, in broad daylight. He was killed in middle-class Petah Tikva because he asked the teens entering the shop to refrain from spraying their canned sticky-string inside the restaurant. A number of the teens have been arrested, though they are not talking. Zelka’s family is calling the teens professional criminals from criminal families.

We were shocked, but do we tut-tut at our screens, or is this brutal killing a wake-up call? Yes, we should be looking at their families (and arresting their parents), but the real problem is not one of a few bad apples. The problem is systemic. Those teens have grown up with rotten role models going all the way to the top: Our governing party, up to and including our prime minister, is full of people under investigation, indictment or on trial for flouting the law with impunity. Our minister of national security is, according to the attorney general, a direct threat to our national security. While he focuses on everything but addressing crime, crime organizations terrorize citizens with demands for protection payments and with murders for which no one is arrested.

The problem is systemic when settlers rampage in Arab villages, when the army warns of the danger of their actions, but at most, one or two people are arrested and released the next day. It is systemic when the government, along with a non-trivial segment of the country, quietly condones the actions of those settlers.

The problem is systemic when soldiers video themselves destroying a religious statue in Lebanon. It is systemic when our educational system is failing and the battle to teach in overcrowded classrooms is being lost. It is systemic when the never-ending war sends them time and........

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)