Public security minister pledges to appoint special staff to oversee enforcement of solutions to combat violence against women.
By DANIELLE ZIRIAharonovitch_311 reuters(photo credit: Ammar Awad / Reuters)
Public Security Minister Yitzhak Aharonovitch pledged this week to appoint a special staff to oversee the enforcement of solutions to combat violence against women, something that has never been done before.“The phenomenon of violence against women is contemptible and requires thorough treatment,” Aharonovitch said at the annual WIZO conference in honor of the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women, which took place in Tel Aviv.“Combating violence against women and violence in general is one of the most important issues to note and take care of,” he continued, declaring that the matter “should be placed higher on the list of national priorities.”He asserted that “there should be an end to this issue” in a developed society.According to the Women’s International Zionist Organization’s annual figures on violence against women in Israel, which it released the day of the conference, 19 women were killed by family members in 2012; 200,000 women have suffered from domestic violence in the past year; and 600,000 children have been exposed to it.“It is difficult to talk about numbers when the numbers are painful, and the main problem is that only 10 percent of women complain to the police, but the numbers of abuses are much higher,” Aharonovitch added.Meretz MK Zehava Gal-On, who also attended the conference, lamented that violence against women continued to occur despite such gatherings.“Every year, we meet and sit here, but at the end, nothing changes. Women continue to be killed because they are women,” she said.“This year, the Finance Ministry and the Welfare and Social Services Ministry even considered closing seven shelters in order to privatize them, which is a terrible thing,” she added.“The Treasury does not see the affected families before their eyes; they spend billions on nonsense and save on battered women.”During the event, participants lit a candle and held a minute of silence in the memory of the 19 women killed this past year.“In Israel, there are about 200,000 battered women and over half a million children who grow up surrounded by violence.Some of these women do not survive,” WIZO Israel chairwoman Gila Oshrat told participants at the conference.“The 19 women murdered this year were 19 women from different communities, with different life stories, but with one common denominator: They were all victims of terror and violence,” she continued. “These women have no army, these women have no weapons and no elite units that can protect them. On the contrary, the person who is supposed to protect them is actually an enemy, and the enemy is inside the house – it is the man with whom they chose to link their fate for love.”She said that “these families’ lives are intertwined with confusion and anxiety.”
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