By Pesach Benson • April 26, 2026
Jerusalem, 26 April, 2026 (TPS-IL) — Sunday morning in Israel opened with two separate deadly incidents, as police described a wave of homicides in recent days as a “continuous state of emergency.”
In Moshav Aviel, south of Haifa, a 43-year-old man and his six-year-old son were found dead in an apparent murder-suicide. Hours earlier, in Hatzor HaGlilit in the Upper Galilee, a 16-year-old boy was stabbed to death overnight.
According to police, the Aviel case is being treated as a murder-suicide investigation. The father is believed to have shot his son before taking his own life using a firearm taken from a relative nearby. He reportedly sent a suicide message via WhatsApp to a family member abroad, who alerted others and triggered the police response.
“When we arrived at the scene, we saw a man and a child unconscious, without a pulse and without breathing… we had to declare them dead at the scene,” Magen David Adom (MDA) paramedic Shulamit Arinos said.
In a separate incident overnight, a 16-year-old boy was fatally stabbed in the Galilee town of Hatzor HaGlilit during what police described as a violent confrontation. The boy was from Salama, a nearby predominantly Bedouin village.
MDA emergency teams performed CPR at the scene before rushing him to Ziv Hospital in Safed, where he was pronounced dead.
“We saw the injured man lying unconscious, without a pulse and not breathing, with severe penetrating injuries… we provided prolonged CPR and evacuated him in critical condition,” MDA paramedic Liad Greenberg said.
Police said a 28-year-old resident of Hatzor HaGlilit was arrested at the scene and that both the victim and suspect were known to investigators, adding that the stabbing was criminal in nature.
The two teens were the eleventh and twelfth murder victims in the past week across multiple cities. Police Commissioner Levy said authorities are operating “in a continuous state of emergency,” warning that not all incidents can be prevented in advance.
“There are events that originate from organized crime, conflicts between criminal organizations and struggles for control and power – against which we act forcefully, in a focused and systematic manner, with a clear goal of damaging the crime infrastructure and collapsing it. Alongside this, unfortunately there are also explosive, unexpected events, those that are difficult and sometimes impossible to prevent in advance.”
The majority of homicides in 2026 are in the Israeli-Arab community. More than 92 Israeli-Arabs have been murdered amid surging violence attributed to organized crime groups engaged in turf wars and efforts to eliminate rivals. Arab criminal organizations have been involved in extortion, money laundering, and the trafficking of weapons, drugs, and women.
Critics argue the crime wave has worsened since Itamar Ben-Gvir, a far-right politician, became National Security Minister in 2022.
