Israeli police officers. Photo: wiki commons.

A number of attacks over the past year have left some Israelis suspicious that police are actively trying to categorize Arab terrorist attacks as other sorts of crimes, according to Arutz Sheva.

The publication sites 4 different examples of mistaken reports coming from Israeli police following what were later found to be serious terrorist attacks.

The first was the death of Rabbi Moshe Talbi, who was found shot to death. Police originally ruled the incident a suicide, but according to Arutz Sheva, evidence pointed to terrorism.

In September of last year, a father and his infant son were murdered by Arab terrorists.  The police originally claimed that reckless driving led to the two deaths but an investigative report forced the authorities to change their tune.

Earlier this year, in February, two Israeli soldiers were severely beaten in the Haifa area and afterwards, a relative of one of the victims said the two were asked “are you Jewish?”, before being attacked.  In this case, police have said a case of mistaken identity led to the crime, not Arab nationalism.

The last of the four incidents Arutz Sheva refers to happened just last week, when a man walking his dog was gunned down and murdered.  The victim, George Sado, reportedly told a neighbor who found him just before dying, that his attackers said they did what they did “because of what you are doing in Gaza.”

Arutz Sheva provides two theories on why the police would want to cover up the reality of these attacks.  The first is that they want to do everything they can to “maintain the peace” in Jewish-Arab cities, and designating the attacks as something other than terrorism is something the police believe will help them reach that goal.

The second is of a statistical nature.  Arutz Sheva writes that police may be trying to inflate their success rate in fighting Arab terrorism by “redefining Arab assaults on Jews as regular criminal incidents”.