Yemanu Binyamin Zalka did not die on a battlefield, in a terrorist attack, or in one of the places Israelis have learned to mark as dangerous.
He was 21 years old, recently released from the IDF, and working a shift at a Pizza Hut in Petah Tikva on the eve of Independence Day. According to police and witness accounts, he asked teenagers to stop spraying foam inside the restaurant. They allegedly waited for him outside after his shift, attacked him, and fatally stabbed him.
Doctors at the Rabin Medical Center-Beilinson Campus in Petah Tikva fought for his life before he succumbed to his wounds.
A young man went to work and did not come home. But the part that should keep the country awake is this: The suspects are children.
The police have arrested teenagers in connection with the killing. Footage reportedly showed minors surrounding Zalka, as one person tried to defend him. Some of the suspects allegedly tried to evade arrest by turning off their cellphones and staying away from their homes.
There is a temptation, in a case like this, to reach for the hardest words available. It is understandable but too easy. If we stop there, we get to be shocked without being responsible.
After his death, Zalka’s relatives described him as a good child, raised well, involved in Bnei Akiva, and who “found himself dying in a shocking and cruel way.” His sister Yeros said the younger siblings should not have to grow up feeling they were not protected.
Residents gathered outside the Pizza Hut branch with candles and flowers, demanding justice and security. Public criticism focused not only on the suspects but also on the police, with residents and politicians wondering how this could happen.
The police pushed back, saying some murders are sudden, eruptive events that are difficult or impossible to prevent. Police Commissioner Daniel Levi called for education, welfare, prosecution, courts, and government ministries to stand alongside the police.
That may be true, but it is not enough. By the time teenagers allegedly wait outside a workplace for a young man who asked them to behave like human beings, the state has already been absent for years.
Rage is new language for traumatized Israeli children
Israeli children and teenagers have spent the past five to six years absorbing one national shock after another: COVID closures, social isolation, interrupted schooling, the October 7 massacre, continuous war, displacement, sirens, funerals, anxious homes, and a public sphere that has taught them that rage is a language.
Study after study, in Israel and abroad, has warned that prolonged instability, trauma, isolation, and disrupted schooling harm children’s mental health, weaken belonging, and can surface in withdrawal, aggression, risk-taking, and violence.
This does not excuse violence; rather, it explains why slogans will fail. A “war on youth crime” may be necessary now, because the streets have to be safe tonight. But Israel has become far too fluent in emergency operations and far too weak at prevention.
On Wednesday, State Comptroller Matanyahu Englman said his office had opened an audit into the handling of violence among youth and in the education system. The recent violence is a phenomenon “that cannot be accepted,” he said, adding that the education minister, national security minister, and local government must “join hands” to treat and eradicate it.
Englman urged them not to wait for the findings and to act now.
That sentence should become official policy: Do not wait. Do not wait for another funeral. Do not wait for another viral video. Do not wait for a minor to become a murderer before asking who saw him, who missed him, who feared him, who failed him, or who tried to intervene and was ignored.
And above all, do not wait until after the election. While the country’s children are fraying, the adults responsible for them are organizing themselves around power.
Parties are merging, blocs are calculating, and polls are being dissected. But a country that can find time to plan its next campaign can find time to protect its children before the posters go up.
The state owes Yemanu Zalka’s family arrests, indictments, and the truth: This was not a bolt from a clear sky. The challenge is before the leaders, and the question now is whether they will face it head-on – by investing in the education and care needed to tame the phenomenon – or continue in their own pursuits of power.
