For years, the police and the Ministry of Justice have refused to provide information on criminal cases according to various parameters such as origin, religion or race, claiming that doing so could lead to a deepening of racial labeling and hurt public sentiment. In September 2021, the State Attorney's Office decided to reconsider its position on the matter, and published a call for public opinions. The Association for Civil Rights in Israel, the Association of Ethiopian Jews, the Adva Center and the Socio-Legal Clinic submitted a position paper (Hebrew) in which we emphasized the importance of data collection and segmentation in order to recognize and deal with phenomena such as inequality in the criminal justice system, including profiling and the different influence of the law enforcement system on the different groups in society. We requested that information also be collected regarding the ethnicity of Jews by country of origin, because experience shows, as do various studies, that the third generation of immigrants from Arab and Islamic countries in Israel also suffer from overrepresentation as suspects, defendants and crime victims.
In January 2024, the Ministry of Justice completed formulating a policy on the subject, and decided that information regarding suspects, defendants and crime victims should begin to be collected and divided according to the following characteristics: gender; nationality – Jewish or Arab, as well as sub-groups within non-Jewish society; belonging to ultra-Orthodox society; and ethnicity – for Ethiopian immigrants only. Therefore , on July 21, 2024, we contacted the State Attorney's Office, and asked to include the category of third generation ethnicity among Jews in the collection, division and publication of data.
Director of Political Advocacy Attorney Debbie Gilad-Hayo and Freedom of Protest and Field Coordinator Sivan Tahel sent legal correspondence to the State Attorney emphasizing the importance of dividing the data according to this characteristic as well: "When statistics ignore phenomena prevalent in relation to certain groups in society, they do not adequately reflect reality, and create a false impression that differentiates between groups in society do not exist at all. But ignoring the gaps does not solve the problem that everyone is aware of. In the absence of data, it is impossible to understand the issues of gaps and inequality between the groups, it is impossible to conduct studies, and it is not possible to promote policy change in order to eradicate these phenomena." Following the ACRI's legal correspondence (Hebrew), the Central Bureau of Statistics began to collect, divide and publish information based on the category of ethnicity among the third generation group of Jews in Israel, and the tool they developed could help other bodies do so.
Position Paper: Sectoral Segmentation Policy of Cases, Association for Civil Rights in Israel, Association of Ethiopian Jews, Adva Center and the Socio-Legal Clinic' 7.10.2021 (Hebrew)
Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI) Letter to the State Attorney's Office, July 21, 2024 (Hebrew)