Independence Day killing puts spotlight on youth violence wracking Petah Tikva’s streets

Murder of Pizza Hut employee by gang of teens seen as part of larger trend of delinquent adolescents roving sidewalks and starting fights in central Israel city and beyond

There were more police officers than normal patrolling the central city promenade in the Tel Aviv suburb of Petah Tikvah on Monday afternoon. Loitering on a corner, two adolescent boys were pulled aside by cops who spoke to them for a few minutes before deciding they weren’t trouble and letting them go.

For Yemanu Binyamin Zelka, the upped presence of law enforcement came too late. Early Wednesday morning, as the country celebrated Independence Day, the 21-year-old Pizza Hut employee was brutally beaten and stabbed to death by a group of teenagers in front of the store as he ended his shift.

The murder, on a main street in full view of passersby and security cameras, sent shockwaves through the city and far beyond, bringing the subject of juvenile delinquency to the center of the national consciousness.

But the phenomenon of marauding, violent teenagers terrorizing city streets had been troubling Petah Tikva, as it has other cities, for some time before it became lethal last week.

“I’m not surprised about the murder, because I’ve been shouting about this issue for over a year, but I am surprised that no one has dealt with it until now,” said Yaron Kedoshim, a social activist and volunteer police patrolman in Petah Tikva who runs a hostel for the developmentally disabled.

Since the killing, the site of the murder has been transformed into a makeshift memorial to Zelka, the doors to the Pizza Hut blocked by wreaths, posters lamenting violence and asking forgiveness, and dozens of memorial candles spread out across the sidewalk.

Just south of there, the downtown promenade continued to bustle with midday activity Monday. Retirees sipped coffee outside kiosks and once school ended, the sidewalk filled with parents walking their children home, leisurely stopping at shops on the way.

“I’m not scared about walking around here, but my grandson is 13 and I’m very worried for him,” said a woman who gave her first name as Yehudit. Nearby, cops stopped two young boys on scooters.

The Tuesday night attack, caught on film by a security camera, involved a group of around a dozen youths who allegedly got mad at Zelka after he told them to stop spraying party foam in the restaurant. Police suspect the group waited for Zelka to finish his shift. They then jumped him, kicking and punching him as he tried to defend himself.

At some point, one of the teenagers took out a knife and stabbed Zelka. In the footage, the attacker can be seen backing away from the brawl, knife still in hand, as the victim bleeds out on the ground.

Lying on the sidewalk in a pool of blood, Zelka continued to be kicked by some in the group, who then ran away.

He was taken to the hospital, where a day later he succumbed to his wounds.

According to Hebrew media outlets, it took police more than 36 hours to seriously investigate the killing, believing at first that it was a brawl among teenagers that had gotten out of hand. No arrests were made until Saturday.

As of Monday, police said nine suspects, aged 12 to 17, had been arrested in connection with the killing.

According to Kedoshim, violent brawls of the type that took Zelka’s life are a nightly occurrence in the city. The culprits are typically teenage boys whose parents are unable — for whatever reason — to keep them in the house at night. Groups of adolescents roam the streets, starting fights or zooming around on scooters.

In one recent incident, a passerby who refused to give two teens a cigarette was badly beaten.

“These children go out onto the streets, they’re bored and searching for thrills and also want to prove that they’re manly, that they’re brave,” Kedoshim told The Times of Israel. “They don’t understand the weight of their actions; it’s not criminals who are doing this with intention.”

Despite their youth, Zelka’s older sister said the killers behaved like “professional criminals” by waiting for him outside and refraining from heading home after the killing.

“It’s not just that these are extremely professional criminals, but their parents are also helping them. This is something that should raise a lot of questions for us,” Yaros, the sister, told reporters Monday in front of the pizza restaurant.

The suspected perpetrator of the stabbing itself, a 15-year-old boy, was found hiding out in an apartment that wasn’t his home, and tried to flee before before being caught. His parents were detained on suspicion of helping their child hide from law enforcement.

Speaking to the Kan public broadcaster, sources in law enforcement said the suspects turned off their phones after the killing and were not found at home. Some had been on the run since the attack, while others tried to hide only after Zelka’s death was confirmed.

Days after Zelka’s killing, 19-year-old Destao Tzakul was stabbed to death outside his house in Beersheba. Police arrested three suspects, all of them minors. And in the northern town of Hatzor Haglilit, 16-year-old Adam Sawaed was stabbed to death, with police arresting a 28-year-old local on suspicion of involvement in the lethal stabbing.

Though the Arab community has seen murder rates skyrocket in recent years, killings and violent crime are relatively uncommon in much of the country.

Petah Tikva has a long history as a hotbed of underworld activity, which has resurged over the past four years, but law-abiding residents have been relatively insulated from the violence, which — unlike in Arab society — rarely claims the lives of ordinary people.

Zelka’s killing, according to Kedoshim, was not directly related to organized crime, but the perpetrators may have still been influenced by their environment.

“They are imitating them, these kids in the neighborhood see the big criminals and think to themselves: ‘That’s a man, I want to be like him.’ Many aren’t succeeding in school, they can’t say they’re going to become a pilot, but they can say they know how to hit, how to steal,” he said.

This problem has only been exacerbated by the constant interruptions to school in recent years, first due to COVID-19, and more recently due to wartime safety restrictions, negatively impacting the younger generation’s development, experts say.

Violence by teen delinquents is not a new phenomenon. In one 2012 case that Zelka’s killing seemed to echo, Gadi Vichman, a 36-year-old father, was stabbed to death by a teen after asking a group of youths loitering in a park near his Beersheba home to lower their voices so his young daughter could sleep.

A day later, 17-year-old Orgil Muati was stabbed to death by other teens in a Rehovot park.

But residents and others say violence, even if rarely deadly, appears to be on the rise in recent years.

In the Tel Aviv District, just west of Petah Tikva, arrests of minors in 2025 stood at nearly double the 2022 number, according to police data obtained by the Ynet news site. Most of these cases involve public order disturbances such as fighting in a public place and unlawful assembly, property damage and violent offenses.

The sharp rise in crime in Tel Aviv is often attributed to SSQ, a violent youth gang that in recent years has cast a long shadow over residents in the south of the city, and has formed ties with larger criminal syndicates in the country.

But while SSQ, short for Shapira Squad, is understood to largely consist of the children of African and Filipino migrants, around 80 percent of the cases opened against minors in the district in recent years concern Israeli citizens, according to the data.

Oron Meiri, a lawyer and former crime reporter for Yedioth Ahronoth who covered Petah Tikva and its environs, said the city had experienced a rise in thefts and gang violence in the city over the past few years. But he described Zelka’s killing as entirely unrelated to the wider crime problem.

“There’s been a very significant rise in crime as of late and the police, unfortunately, haven’t been able to deal with this phenomenon, but here, what happened here is simply a lack of enforcement when it comes to youth,” he said. “When there isn’t enforcement and kids can do whatever they want, it ends in disaster.”

On Sunday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called for action against youth violence, saying the issue must be nipped in the bud “while it is small.”

But hours earlier, Chief Police Commissioner Danny Levy described the killings of Zelka and Tzakul as “spontaneous, unpredictable incidents” that police were largely powerless to combat.

Avi Mantzur, a lawyer and former senior police detective, said authorities could help crack down on juvenile delinquency through both traditional policing and via more community-oriented work.

“It’s not just an issue of force, but reverence for police officers,” said Mantzur, who led the Central District’s investigations and intelligence division before retiring in 2011.

Police should not only be responding to violent incidents, but also paying regular visits to the homes of teenagers with a history of criminal activity and maintaining regular contact with their parents, he suggested.

According to Meiri, police have not been proactive enough in deterring youth violence. Cops could ramp up their nighttime patrols in parks and playgrounds, he noted, adding that authorities could prioritize reaching scenes of violent incidents faster to find suspects, secure crime scenes, and ensure evidence is uncontaminated.

“Police must act and investigate as is needed in these cases, so that things like this won’t happen again,” he said.