The Manufactured Abyss: Why Markets Parasitize Social Ties in Israel
We often talk about capitalism as an abstract force that “arrives” and replaces old ways of living. But as any sociologist will tell you—and as Mark Granovetter famously argued—economic action is always embedded in ongoing networks of social relations.
The crisis we are seeing in Israel today, particularly the explosion of organized crime in Arab and collectivist Jewish communities, isn’t just a failure of policing. It is a failure of disembedded capitalism.
1. Markets Don’t Replace Social Ties—They Parasitize Them
In collectivist communities, the market doesn’t exist in a vacuum. Jobs are found through kin, credit runs on trust, and reputation carries more weight than any legal contract.
When neoliberalism scales back public protection and raises the cost of living, it doesn’t create the “efficient, anonymous market” economists dream of.

Instead, it forces survival back into the social network. The result?
* Overburdened Networks: Strong ties (family/close friends) get exhausted by the weight of economic survival.
* The Mobility Gap: Weak ties—the ones Granovetter noted are essential for upward mobility—fail to open new doors.
* The Shadow Economy: This is where illicit networks step in. Organized crime is successful precisely because it is deeply embedded. It provides the loans, the protection, and the employment that the “legitimate” market has abandoned.
2. The Embeddedness Paradox: Why Policing Alone Fails
From a Granovetterian lens, you cannot dismantle a criminal organization by force if that organization is woven into the fabric of everyday life.
> “Criminal networks are not just gangs; they are embedded in loans, weddings, employment, and local protection.”
>
If you remove these networks without rebuilding legitimate embedded markets, you simply leave a vacuum. The current protests against crime in the Arab sector are, at their core, a demand for the state to re-embed the economy in institutions that are legal, transparent, and respectful of communal obligations.
3. The “Bad Fit” of Disembedded Capitalism
It’s not capitalism per se that is the problem—it is a version of it that ignores the social structure. Markets that fail to provide stable housing, jobs, or a path upward force people to rely on embedded alternatives. Whether those alternatives are legal (mutual aid) or illegal (protection rackets) depends entirely on which one actually “works” to ensure survival.
4. The Clinic as the Last Bastion
There is one place where this logic still holds together: Care work. In the psychiatric clinic or the hospital ward, labor is still inherently relational. Trust and embedded roles are the currency.

This is perhaps why Palestinian workers are so central to the Israeli healthcare sector—and why it remains one of the few functional spaces of mutual reliance. It is a sector that refuses to be fully “disembedded” from human connection.

Key Takeaway for 2026

As of January 2026, we’ve seen over 20 homicides in the Arab sector in just the first two weeks. This isn’t a “crime wave”—it’s a sociological symptom. Until we stop mopping the floor while the pipe of disembedded capitalism is still leaking, no amount of policing will fill the void.

In sociology,

Anomie isn’t just “chaos”;

it’s the structural breakdown that happens when a society tells everyone to achieve the same goals (The “Israeli Dream”:

wealth, status, consumption) but fails to provide the legal means for everyone to get there.

Merton’s Typology of Adaptation

Merton argued that when there is a “strain” between cultural goals and institutionalized means, individuals adapt in five ways.

In the context of the Arab sector in Israel,

we see a massive structural push toward Innovation.

Adaptation Cultural Goals (Success/Money)

Institutional Means (Jobs/Education) Application to the Arab Sector Conformity Accept (+) Accept (+)

Those who work within the system despite the hurdles

. Innovation Accept (+) Reject (-) Organized Crime. Accepting the goal of wealth but using “innovative” (illicit) means to get it.

Ritualism Reject (-) Accept (+) Going through the motions of a low-wage job with no hope of advancement.

Retreatism Reject (-) Reject (-) Dropping out; often manifests as substance abuse or complete social withdrawal. Rebellion New Goals (+/-) New Means (+/-) Political radicalization or social movements seeking to change the system.

Why “Innovation” (Organized Crime) Wins in the Arab Sector Using your earlier insight about disembedded capitalism, we can see how Merton’s Anomie manifests specifically in 2026:

1. The Blocked Path (Institutional Failure)
   When the state reduces “institutional means”—by cutting budgets for education (Resolution 550), denying building permits, or limiting access to bank credit—the “legal” path to the Israeli Dream is physically blocked.
2. The Persistence of the Goal
   Through social media and proximity, the Cultural Goal (wealth and status) remains omnipresent.
3. If you are a young man in Nazareth or Umm al-Fahm,
4. you see the same luxury cars and lifestyles as a young man in Tel Aviv. The goal is accepted, but the “means” are absent.
5. Organized Crime as “Efficient Innovation”
   In Merton’s view, organized crime is a rational response to this strain. If the bank won’t give you a loan to start a business (Institutional Means), the “Black Market” will. The illicit network provides the “means” to achieve the “goal.”
6. This is where Merton meets Granovetter:
7. the Innovation (crime) becomes Embedded in the community because it fulfills a functional economic need that the state refuses to meet.
   
8. The Sociological Synthesis
   

• Merton shows us that the strain creates the demand for illicit paths.
• Granovetter shows us that these paths survive because they are woven into weddings, loans, and local reputation.
  Protesting for “policing” without addressing Anomie is like treating a fever without looking at the infection. You can arrest the “Innovators,” but as long as the “Means” are blocked, the structure will simply produce new ones.
  
• Merton, R. K. (1938). Social Structure and Anomie. American Sociological Review, 3(5), 672–682.
• Sampson, R. J., & Bartusch, D. J. (1998). Legal Cynicism and Subcultural Tolerance of Deviance. (This builds on Merton to explain why communities “tolerate” crime when the law feels illegitimate).
  

• Times of Israel – “Arab society stages nationwide strike over police failure to curb violent crime” (21 Jan 2026).​
  Reports a general strike and marches in Arab towns, especially Sakhnin, protesting police inaction and rising violent crime.​

• Jerusalem Post – “Tens of thousands protest rising crime in Arab sector” (21 Jan 2026).​
  Covers a large protest in Sakhnin criticizing police failure to tackle organized crime in the “Arab sector,”
• including quotes from Ayman Odeh and other leaders.​