Dafna Netanyahu Addresses Arab Violence Against Women
BY SAMUEL SOKOL
Dafna Netanyahu, sister-in-law of Israeli
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and
editor of the online political magazine
Maarah, decried Israeli silence over Arab
sexual crimes against Jewish women.
Netanyahu was speaking on Sunday at a
conference entitled “Violence against a
Backdrop of National Conflict.”
The conference, held in Tel-Aviv’s Bet
Jabotinsky building, was the first event
of the newly formed Israeli women’s
lobby, the Zionist Women’s Forum. The
purpose of the gathering was to bring
awareness of sexual crimes into the
mainstream discourse.
Netanyahu spoke with the Five Towns
Jewish Times about the lack of discussion
regarding this issue. “Felonies against
Israeli [and] Jewish women by Arabs is a
wide phenomenon. It’s not just by chance
and it’s a phenomenon that has to be
dealt [with] very seriously, because it has
major effects on the ability to live in
mixed neighborhoods,” Netanyahu stated.
She continued, “I think that in order to
solve any problem one has to deal with
the problem, one has to describe the
problem, and one of the problems with
this problem is that we are not allowed to
describe it.”
The conference was called to coincide
with the International Day for
Combating Violence against Women. In
observance of the day, PM Netanyahu
spent Wednesday afternoon visiting a
shelter for battered women in Jerusalem.
Among the panelists at the event were
journalist Gil Ronen, Likud MK Tzipi
Hotobeli, and Bar-Ilan University Arabist
Dr. Motti Kedar.
Several speakers claimed that this issue is
ignored by the police and the mainstream
media due to political correctness.
Dr. Kedar pointed out that in Arab trib-
al culture, women are treated as posses-
sions and that defiling an enemy’s
women is an accepted tool for asserting
dominance. He claimed that Arabs view
women as little more than “dolls” for the
“service” of men. Kedar served for 25 years
in IDF military intelligence, specializing
in Arab political discourse, and is an
expert on Israeli-Arabs.
Speakers from communities with
mixed Jewish and Arab populations, such
as Hebron and Nazareth Ilit, discussed
the deteriorating situation in which
Arabs have become increasingly bold in
harassing Jewish women. Several speak-
ers claimed that this issue is ignored by
the police and the mainstream media due
to political correctness.
A teenager from the Jewish communi-
ty of Hevron described the daily harass-
ment of Jewish girls by local Arabs while
Arab women pass by unmolested. She
related how the police refused to pursue
a young man who attempted to sexually
assault her.
Amit Barak is a former border guard
officer and the current deputy director-
general of the Israeli nationalist Im Tirzu
student organization. He claimed that
during municipal elections in the mixed
Jewish-Arab town of Nazareth Ilit, the
5 TOWNS JEWISH TIMES
courts ordered the removal of election
ads highlighting Arab sexual assault as a
growing problem in the community, after
receiving complaints from the Adalah
Arab rights organization.
Gil Ronen, a journalist with Arutz
Sheva’s news website, expressed hope in
seeing this issue dealt with in the media,
even though the event garnered barely
any attendance by reporters. “There are
people inside the media who are human
beings. If you approach them the right
way you can make headway,” he stated.
There was recently an outcry in Israel
over an Arab poster which portrayed an
Israeli soldier grasping the breast of an
Arab woman with the tagline “the occu-
pation penetrates her life every day.”
According to the Jewish Chronicle, Dr.
Himmat Zuabi of the Israeli-Arab Mada
Al-Carmel NGO explained the poster as
follows. “We didn’t talk about actual rape
and sexual harassment; we tried to show
how the political issue, which is what
everybody talks about, has a daily effect
on the lives of Palestinian women. The
poster was just an artistic device to con-
vey a message.” Mada Al-Carmel is known
for the Haifa Declaration, which called
for the negation of the Jewish character
of the state of Israel. The declaration was
funded by the European Union. ❖
November 27, 2009 37