Arab Israeli beauty salon owner shot dead in broad daylight

According to the authorities, a gunman entered Mansour’s business and shot her five times, then fled the scene.

By Lauren Marcus, World Israel News

A mother of three was shot dead at her beauty salon in the central Arab Israeli municipality of Tira on Monday afternoon, Hebrew language media reported.

Suha Mansour, 38, became the 32nd Arab Israeli murdered in 2021, just days after two cousins were shot dead in the Arab town of Deir Al-Assad and another man was shot dead in the northern Bedouin village of Ibtin.

According to the authorities, a gunman entered Mansour’s business and shot her five times, then fled the scene. The gunman is still at large.

“We arrived at the scene and were led to a woman who was unconscious with gunshot wounds to her body,” Muhammad Matar, an MDA paramedic, said in a statement.

“We performed medical tests on her but she was without signs of life and we had no choice but to declare her death.”

Mansour’s husband is not thought to be the main suspect in the case. Although her husband was previously convicted of assaulting her, and she divorced him while he served time in prison, the pair had reconciled and appeared to be living together happily.

Kan News reported that within the last few months, Mansour’s car was torched and shots were fired at her business. It appears that members of Mansour’s extended family were involved in a conflict with another clan, and that may be the reason why she was targeted.

A relative of Mansour slammed the police for what many Arab Israelis say is a lack of police response to rising violent crime in Arab communities.

“[The police] are not doing anything,” the relative told Ynet. “Another murder to [add to] the list of the murdered, and there is nobody arrested. Why was she murdered?”

A local also blamed law enforcement officers, noting that a new police station had recently opened in Tira.

“There’s police presence in the city, it’s blessed and we accept them with love, but they’re not doing their job,” Ahmed Haskia told Kan News.

“How come they can get to a nuclear scientist thousands of kilometers away, but can’t find the murderer?”

“What is killing us isn’t COVID, [but] the violence in our community,” another Tira local said.

“Police only show up, put up red [crime scene] tape, cordon off the area, and that’s that.”

In March, the mayor of Arab municipality Arara warned that while the violence is mostly contained within Arab localities for now, “the trickle [of bloodshed] into the Jewish towns will become a flood.”

“We live in real fear in our society, of the criminals, of weapons, of violence, a constant, unrelenting fear, and we cannot cope alone,” Mudar Younes said. “This is a problem for the country as a whole, and it is not staying within the boundaries of the Arab municipalities.”