Since October 7, Israel has been living under constant threat. Fear has become ambient. Violence feels – and is – closer, louder, more unpredictable. In Arab towns, shootings and murders have intensified, bringing more shattered families, more young men carried to early graves, and more funerals that blur into one another.
The public debate remains familiar: more policing, harsher penalties, tougher enforcement. All are necessary; none are sufficient. What remains largely unexamined is how violence is seeded long before it erupts – during the first years of life, when a child’s understanding of emotional life, language, and self-control is first formed.
From birth to roughly age three, every child must integrate three basic information-processing systems fundamental to development: the capacity to understand and contain emotional life, the ability to think and anticipate consequences, and the acquisition of symbolic language. By symbolic language, I mean more than vocabulary. It is the ability to put inner experience into words – to say “I am afraid,” “I am angry,” “I feel humiliated,” rather than discharging those feelings through action.
When these systems integrate successfully, children develop internal restraints – the capacity to pause, reflect, and mentalize before acting. When integration is fragile, impulses overwhelm thought, and action replaces reflection.
The roots of political violence
I hold a doctorate in 16th-century Western Islamic hadith texts written in aljamía – Old Spanish in Arabic script. I later trained in psychoanalysis and became a specialist in trauma and PTSD. Over the past decades, my work has focused on the developmental roots of political violence and jihadi movements, resulting in multiple published books.
This unusual trajectory – from medieval Islamic intellectual history to clinical and counterterrorism research – has been invaluable in understanding how collective identities are formed, transmitted, and defended across generations.
Alongside scholarship and clinical practice, I have also been engaged in citizen diplomacy initiatives aimed at normalization with Muslim-majority societies such as Pakistan and Somaliland. I approach the present crisis not from abstraction but from sustained engagement with Islamic traditions, trauma, and coexistence on the ground.
The tension of living as a minority
Arab society in Israel is diverse – religiously, economically, and politically. No single explanation applies uniformly. Many families provide devoted care under difficult conditions. At the same time, chronic stress, economic strain, social fragmentation, exposure to violence, and experiences of marginalization strain parental capacity.
Arab citizens also navigate the tensions of living as a minority within a state that defines itself as Jewish and democratic. Ambiguity of belonging and periodic political alienation can intensify communal insecurity and parental anxiety, further complicating already fragile developmental environments.
The estimated hundreds of thousands of illegal weapons in Arab towns suggest not merely criminal opportunity but widespread perceived vulnerability. Psychologically, weapons can function as concrete security objects. In environments where internal regulation is fragile and trust in institutions is low, the gun becomes a portable substitute for safety, control, and identity. What cannot be symbolized is acted out; what cannot be verbalized is discharged.
Honor-based social systems, which remain influential in parts of Arab society, offer powerful strengths: cohesion, loyalty, family solidarity, and resilience. These qualities have sustained communities under pressure. But when honor becomes fused with retaliation and public displays of strength, violence can become intertwined with dignity. In such settings, de-escalation may feel like humiliation.
Modern statehood does not require abandoning communal identity: It requires integrating communal honor with individual autonomy and institutional authority.
The late Egyptian sociologist Halim Barakat wrote that when violence occurs in the home, society itself becomes violent. This is not a cultural indictment: It is a universal developmental principle. Children who grow up surrounded by fear, intimidation, and unresolved rage learn early that force is the primary language of power.
The formation of the developing mind
I was recently honored to be invited to write the monthly featured guest essay for the US Alliance to End the Hitting of Children (forthcoming). Research and clinical experience converge on a simple but uncomfortable truth: Physical punishment does not teach self-control. It teaches children to associate intimacy with force and authority with fear.
Hitting trains the developing mind to bond violently with others. When early relationships are structured around pain and submission, aggression becomes internalized as a legitimate form of communication.
These early relational patterns do not remain confined to the family. They shape how young people relate to authority, law, and institutions – often with mistrust, defiance, or resignation.
None of this absolves the state. Policing in Arab communities has been inconsistent and, at times, discriminatory. Trust has been eroded. Law enforcement must be strengthened, fair, and reliable. Investment in education, employment, and early childhood services remains essential.
Since October 7 and the ongoing war, Israeli society as a whole has been living under heightened threat perception and collective trauma. Aggression, once unleashed, rarely remains contained – it reverberates across communities. Chronic insecurity intensifies fear, and fear often amplifies defensive arming and reactive violence. While the crisis in the Arab sector long predates the current war, the surrounding atmosphere of conflict has likely accelerated already fragile dynamics.
Communal change
Communities, too, must decide that change is necessary. No society can reduce violence without internal leadership willing to confront norms that perpetuate silence, retaliation, shaming, and blaming. The desire to change cannot be imposed from outside.
It can only emerge from within Arab communities themselves – from parents, educators, religious figures, local leaders, and especially from Arab professionals – physicians, psychologists, social workers, and educators – who are uniquely positioned to educate parents about the critical significance of the first years of life. Without internal commitment and internal expertise guiding reform, even the best external interventions will fail.
This is not an argument for blame: It is an argument for moral and developmental responsibility. Violence is not only a policing problem, and it is not only a criminal problem. It is a child development problem, a family problem, and a leadership problem. Societies that neglect the emotional formation of their youngest members pay for it later in blood.
If Israel is serious about reducing violence in the Arab sector, it must invest not only in weapons confiscation and law enforcement but in early childhood support, parental education, emotional literacy, and community-based leadership. These are not “soft” policies: They are long-term security strategies.
Until we are willing to examine what happens in the first three years of life – how children learn to name fear, tolerate frustration, and regulate anger – we will continue to treat symptoms while leaving the roots intact. No society can afford that illusion indefinitely.
The writer is a psychoanalyst and counterterrorism expert.