Ethnic Profiling in Israel

Racial or ethnic profiling generally refers to identifying people as more likely to be associated with crime because of race, ethnicity, nationality, or religion. The general legal discussion cited here cautions that ethnicity alone is insufficient and must be distinguished from action based on behavior, intelligence, or other objective indicators; it is not a statement of Israeli law in every context.[1]

The word "profiling" is used differently in Israeli security debates. Aviation-security literature describes a passenger-focused "profile method" based on interviews, behavior, body language, and circumstantial details without identifying race or religion as formal criteria.[2] A separate counterterrorism commentary explicitly characterizes Israeli security and intelligence services as using ethnic profiling.[3] Civil-rights organizations and human-rights reports use the term for allegedly selective stops, searches, or enforcement affecting Arab citizens and Israelis of Ethiopian origin.[4][5]

Arab citizens lived under military administration from 1948 until 1966, with the Israel Security Agency assisting the administration through intelligence and early-warning functions. On October 29, 1956, 43 residents of Kafr Kassem were killed after a curfew was imposed on Arab villages near the Jordanian border amid security concerns.[6] These events provide historical context for debates over security powers and minority rights, but do not by themselves establish the existence of a current profiling policy.

Later disputes have involved both excessive and inadequate policing. A 2021 study describes a shift from concern about over-policing—highlighted by the police killing of 13 Arab citizens during the events of October 2000—to a dual concern about over-policing and under-policing, both of which the author connects to marginality and discrimination.[7]

Israeli aviation security uses layered screening with a strong emphasis on human questioning and judgment. Officers may evaluate interview responses, behavior, body language, and circumstantial details before concentrating on baggage.[2] The airline-security model has also been described as using demographic profiling, intelligence databases, and extensive interviews to identify passengers for heightened screening. Israel avoided major terrorist attacks against its airlines and airports for more than 40 years, although the role of particular screening methods in preventing or deterring attacks remains undetermined.[8]

Two incidents illustrate the rationale for human screening. During the Dawson Field hijackings on September 6, 1970, suspicions concerning two Senegalese passport holders were prompted in part by consecutive passport numbers and last-minute first-class bookings. In the Nezar Hindawi case on April 17, 1986, an officer rechecked Ann Mary Murphy's unusually heavy bag and found a bomb.[2]

The aviation source describing this method does not identify ethnicity, race, or religion as formal criteria.[2] Nevertheless, the process is widely understood to expose Arab and Muslim passengers to greater scrutiny and has drawn civil-rights protests.[9] Complaints by Israeli Arabs were recorded in 2004, including an incident in which Arab newspaper editor Lutfi Mashour was prevented from joining a presidential press party after refusing additional checks.[10] In 2007, Arab travelers were reported to complain regularly of discriminatory or degrading treatment.[11]

ACRI and Adalah petitioned the High Court in 2007, alleging that Arab passengers underwent more stringent screening and challenging the use of Arab nationality as a criterion for determining screening intensity.[11][12] The state responded that every passenger received security screening, that the level depended on a threat assessment using intelligence and professional data, and that enhanced screening rested on multiple parameters rather than any one characteristic. It denied that every Arab passenger underwent enhanced screening and said most experienced relatively rapid procedures.[12]

During a 2011 hearing, Supreme Court President Dorit Beinisch said the humiliation of Arab citizens during security screening was unacceptable. The government rejected the discrimination allegation and defended the procedures as effective against terrorism.[13][14] After the court postponed its decision in 2012, the Airports Authority and Israel Security Agency announced measures described as ending stringent entrance searches of Arab citizens and introducing baggage screening intended to provide more uniform treatment, faster checks, and greater privacy.[15]

In March 2015, the Supreme Court deleted the petition after the introduction of a system that screened checked baggage outside the passenger's presence. The court said substantial progress had been made toward equality but did not decide whether distinctions between Israeli passengers based on nationality were lawful. It left open a future petition and awarded 30,000 shekels in costs.[16][17] In a separate September 2015 case involving five Arab passengers removed from a domestic flight, a Magistrate Court found that the airline and Airports Authority had discriminated on ethnic grounds while disguising the discrimination as a security measure. The passengers eventually boarded, but the court described the experience as prohibited and humiliating and awarded compensation.[17]

Another case involved two Arab-Israeli passengers screened by El Al at Larnaca Airport in Cyprus in 2015. They were separated from Jewish companions, searched in a closed room, and held for about 40 minutes. Haifa Magistrate's Court awarded each passenger 18,000 shekels by compromise, finding that unexplained detention for an unreasonable period disproportionately infringed freedom of movement.[18]

The Airports Authority denied conducting inspections by population group. Its legal adviser said fewer than 5 percent of Arab travelers were inspected at Ben-Gurion Airport and that the Authority received more complaints from Jewish travelers than from Christian or Muslim Arab travelers.[19] The Authority also stated that screening depended on multiple security parameters rather than ethnic origin.[20]

A 2022 survey of a representative sample of 506 Arab adults reported that 94 percent had experienced what respondents described as racial profiling in public spaces. The airport was the most frequently identified location, at 41 percent; 65 percent reported being asked to identify themselves, 59 percent reported security screening or a search, and 58 percent reported non-routine questioning. These figures measure reported experiences and perceptions rather than the officially determined incidence of profiling.[21]

Israel Police used an algorithmic system at Ben-Gurion Airport to identify potential drug couriers among arriving passengers. It reportedly compared patterns associated with previously apprehended individuals against information from police and government databases, including gender, residence, marital status, relatives' names, and socioeconomic status. The weights and flagging criteria were undisclosed; factors such as appearance, origin, or residence could not be ruled out, but the reporting did not establish that ethnicity was used.[22]

Courts questioned the system's transparency, legal authority, privacy implications, and whether an algorithmic alert could provide grounds for a search. Police said the final decision remained with an officer and that the system reduced the overall number of searches. A Knesset committee representative argued that the alerts nevertheless shaped officer conduct. Police acknowledged lacking statistical evidence of the system's success rate and said its parameter weights were unknown even to operators.[23]

In 2024, the state told the Supreme Court that police use of the system had ended in April 2022 for "operational considerations." ACRI disputed that explanation and linked the timing to legal criticism. The suspension had not previously been disclosed publicly, and the reporting did not establish whether the system was retained, modified, or replaced.[24]

Human-rights reporting for 2021 and 2022 recorded multiple instances of security services or private citizens racially profiling Arab or Palestinian citizens of Israel.[25][4] The 2023 report also recorded allegations of disproportionate enforcement in Palestinian neighborhoods of East Jerusalem, including more temporary checkpoints and raids than in West Jerusalem.[5] It attributed to Amnesty International allegations that an experimental facial-recognition system was used to track Palestinians, conduct facial scans at checkpoints, and expand surveillance in the Old City without consent.[5]

In discussing the airport-screening case, an INSS analysis quotes the Supreme Court as stating that "an entire population cannot be tagged as a security risk."[6] Civil-rights organizations have nevertheless continued to allege selective screening and enforcement based on Arab identity.

Academic research describes strained police-community relations. A 2012 study based on four focus groups and a representative survey of 1,006 Arab adults examined recruiting Arab officers, cultural training, and institutionalized police-community relations.[26] A 2021 article treats over-policing and under-policing as related consequences of marginality and discrimination.[7] A 2023 study using 692 Arab respondents found that greater satisfaction with and trust in police were associated with less consideration of non-police intervention after possible victimization.[27]

ACRI also alleged that restrictions on travel to Arab countries disproportionately affected Arab-Israeli citizens, noting that Jewish Israelis returning from similar unauthorized travel were not detained.[28]

Official and academic sources document substantial enforcement disparities affecting Israelis of Ethiopian origin. Ethiopians made up approximately 1.7 percent of Israel's population, but investigation files involving them in 2019 were 3.8 times their population share for minors and 1.9 times their share for adults. The State Comptroller described the data as evidence of over-policing.[29]

Between 2015 and 2019, arrests of Ethiopian-Israelis decreased by 4 percent and investigations by 2 percent. Even so, detention, investigation, and indictment rates for adults remained almost twice those of the general population and nearly four times higher for minors. The lack of complaint data disaggregated by population group impeded assessment of racism, profiling, discrimination, and over-policing.[25]

A 2016 interministerial committee found many allegations of discriminatory police conduct justified. It reported widespread Taser use, inappropriate treatment of detainees, and more severe treatment than that received by other groups. Relative to population share, criminal cases involving Ethiopian-origin suspects and defendants occurred at twice the rate, indictments of minors at four times the rate, and prison sentences for minors at ten times the rate. Recommendations included body cameras, tighter regulation of Tasers, stronger penalties for violent officers, Amharic-language documents, and improved complaint procedures.[30]

More than six years later, a follow-up assessment found that about 55 percent of 60 provisions had not been implemented or had been implemented only partly. In a representative national survey, 11.8 percent of Ethiopian-origin respondents said police treated citizens fairly, 72.2 percent said police very often arrested people nearby without sufficient justification, and trust in enforcement bodies stood at 18.5 percent, compared with 44.3 percent in 2016. The government anti-racism unit said most recommendations were being implemented but acknowledged incomplete implementation.[31]

In May 2021, the Tel Aviv Magistrate Court ruled that an officer had illegally searched and questioned a 16-year-old Ethiopian-Israeli in 2018 after identifying him as a potential criminal based on skin color. Police were ordered to compensate him.[25]

A 2017 study found a trust-discrimination paradox: Ethiopian respondents reported trust in police equal to or greater than that of veteran Jewish Israelis while also describing stigmatization by police.[32] A study published in 2026 found that trust declined substantially between 2013 and 2022 and was lowest among respondents aged 18–30. The authors linked the change to second-generation demands for equality within the Jewish-Zionist collective and rejection of efforts to obscure institutional racism.[33]

Research led by Guy Ben-Porat characterized policing of Arab citizens as under-policing and policing of Ethiopian Israelis as over-policing. Israel Police disputed this interpretation, saying enforcement was equal and that disparities reflected crime involvement and violence against officers rather than bias.[34] A 2021 study found support for recruiting Ethiopian-origin officers and cultural-sensitivity training, alongside concern that special measures could reinforce perceptions of Ethiopian Israelis as a separate group requiring accommodation.[35]

Police authority to request identity documents without reasonable suspicion became a major legal dispute. Petitioners argued that vague criteria disproportionately exposed Arab citizens, Ethiopian Israelis, and other minorities to identity checks, harming dignity, privacy, freedom of movement, and equality.[36]

On January 25, 2021, the High Court required police to create clear criteria governing identification requests made without reasonable suspicion. Police issued a revised procedure in July, but petitioning organizations argued that it still enabled profiling; the court declined an additional hearing in December.[25] Effective January 28, 2022, police were barred from questioning individuals or reviewing their records without reasonable suspicion that they had committed a crime.[4]

In December 2025, the High Court struck down two clauses in procedures issued in 2022 that had allowed identity demands without adequate cause. It held that officers required a reasonable factual basis to suspect that a person had committed or was about to commit a crime. Petitioners argued that the procedures enabled arbitrary stops of Arabs, Ethiopian Israelis, Mizrahi Jews, and other minorities.[37]

Broader discrimination data provide context but do not measure ethnic profiling specifically. A 2022 Government Unit to Coordinate the Fight Against Racism survey reportedly found that more than 83 percent of the Arab population had encountered institutional racism. The unit receives more than 400 complaints annually; Arab complainants submitted 32 percent of the 2022 total, approximately 1.5 times their population share. The cited report did not provide the survey's sample size or methodology.[38]

An INSS analysis states that security-agency confidentiality makes a complete public assessment of counter-radicalization programs difficult and identifies a considerable lack of preventive strategy beyond limited initiatives. Its warning about crude profiling of young Muslims concerns Britain's Prevent program, not an Israeli program.[39]

Israeli law protects racial and ethnic minorities against discrimination in employment, products, and services, and the government generally enforces those protections. NGOs nevertheless reported de facto discrimination in education, employment, social services, personal security, and housing, along with weakened enforcement of minority protections after October 7, 2023.[40]

A Jerusalem Center for Security and Foreign Affairs commentary characterizes Israeli security and intelligence services as employing ethnic profiling "liberally and unapologetically" to identify prospective terrorists and accomplices. It presents this as a deliberate counterterrorism posture and also describes targeted arrest operations by elite IDF units. The article does not document a formal profiling policy or disclose operational criteria.[3]

The Israeli aviation model has also been considered difficult to transfer to other countries. Research discussed by the Congressional Research Service concluded that screening designed for the United States' legal and operational environment would be more politically feasible, socially acceptable, and legally defensible than extensive Israeli-style interviewing and targeted screening.[8]

The central aviation dispute is whether ethnicity or nationality has functioned as a formal screening criterion. Petitioners alleged nationality-based differential treatment, while the state described a classified, multi-parameter threat assessment and denied that all Arab citizens underwent enhanced checks. The Supreme Court's 2015 decision recorded progress toward equality but left the underlying legal question unresolved.[16] A separate court found ethnic discrimination in one domestic-flight incident, but that finding does not establish that all airport screening is discriminatory.[17]

Police Commissioner Roni Alsheich intensified the debate in August 2016 when he said studies showed immigrants were more involved in crime and that officers would "naturally" suspect immigrants more than others. He apologized two days later after public criticism.[41]

The airport drug-screening algorithm remains contested because its criteria and weights were undisclosed. Police described it as an aid that reduced searches, while courts, ACRI, and a Knesset committee representative raised concerns about legal authority, privacy, transparency, and its influence on officer decisions.[22][23] The state's later disclosure that it had stopped operating in April 2022 did not clarify whether the technology had been retained, modified, or replaced.[24]

Police also dispute interpretations of enforcement disparities affecting Arab and Ethiopian-Israeli communities, attributing encounter and use-of-force differences to crime patterns and officer-safety considerations rather than bias.[34] The absence of population-disaggregated complaint statistics limits independent assessment of those competing explanations.[25]