Dafna Netanyahu 5tjt

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.

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 speakers claimed that this issue is ignored by the police and the mainstream media due to political correctness. A teenager from the Jewish community of Hevron described the daily harass-

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 tribal culture, women are treated as possessions 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

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 directorgeneral of the Israeli nationalist Im Tirzu student organization. He claimed that during municipal elections in the mixed Jewish-Arab town of Nazareth Ilit, the

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 occupation 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 convey 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. ❖

5 TOWNS JEWISH TIMES

November 27, 2009

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