Violence within young relationships is rising sharply, while Israel no longer has a functioning national system for monitoring violence against women, WIZO warned in its annual report released on Tuesday, marking the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women.
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The Women’s International Zionist Organization’s findings reveal the depth of a crisis that WIZO says today begins in adolescence and extends into adulthood, while policymakers remain mainly in the dark.
A generation living through a multiyear national trauma, from the pandemic to the war, is under severe pressure, and the country remains ill-equipped to track, understand, or address the violence shaping the lives of these girls and women.
WIZO’s youth study paints a portrait of teenagers navigating relationships shaped by instability, stress, and unrelenting digital exposure. Out of 356 high-school students surveyed, 39% said that violence among teens has increased since October 7, 2023.
Among those in relationships, 49% reported a rise in tension due to the war, and 22% said their partner had used the wartime atmosphere as justification for controlling or harmful behavior.
Most teens struggle even to identify when someone else is in danger. Fifty-six percent said they could not recognize the signs that a friend is in a harmful relationship. Relatedly, 54% said they had never taken part in any school activity addressing domestic violence. Yet the issue deeply concerns them: 77% believe schools should teach about violence in relationships from a young age.
Although 58% of students said they would theoretically approach their parents if they encountered dating violence, only 31% of those who had faced real incidents actually did so.
Adults working with youth feel equally unprepared. Among 150 educators surveyed, 46% said they had identified a case of domestic or family violence within the last three years, and another 46% reported an increase in such cases since the war began.
Sixty-nine percent of educators said they lacked the tools to identify harmful relationships among young people, and 68% had received no relevant training in the past 7 years. Just 20% felt confident in identifying early signs of coercive or violent dynamics.
WIZO stressed that violence in teen relationships rarely presents as physical harm. Instead, it appears through obsessive messaging, phone checking, digital surveillance, isolation from friends, emotional manipulation, threats to distribute intimate photos, and statements like “If you leave me, I’ll hurt myself.”
Those patterns, often normalized online or learned at home, lay the foundations for abuse in adulthood.
WIZO Violence Index exposes Israeli failures to gather national data
THIS YEAR’S index is the last WIZO will publish after 13 years, the organization said, following repeated failures by state authorities to supply consistent, complete, and comparable data. Of the 10 ministries and bodies approached for information, only six responded, and even their responses were partial or inconsistent with previous years.
Despite the data gaps, the existing information is alarming. According to Israel’s first national survey on domestic violence by the Central Bureau of Statistics in 2024, one in 10 Israelis aged 18 to 65, roughly 576,000 people, experienced violence from a partner in the past year. Women reported physical violence at a rate of 5.3%, compared to 3.8% among men.
Police records for 2024 show 11,678 cases of physical domestic violence against women and 4,420 cases against men, both of which are increases from previous years. The pattern linking past reports to fatal outcomes remains stark: 38% of women murdered in 2024 had previously filed complaints about violence, and 35% of suspects had prior domestic-violence files.
Femicide rose significantly in 2024.
Because there is no unified national methodology, tallies differ: Civil-society organizations and authorities variously report between 31 and 42 victims, more than a third of whom were previously known to welfare or police services.
WIZO notes that “the home continues to be the most dangerous place for women in Israel,” and that the central failure lies not only in prevention but in the system’s inability to identify life-threatening risk in time.
The Index also cites troubling trends linked to the war: a dramatic rise in requests for risk assessments concerning men with firearms, and a sharp increase in the number of civilians holding licensed weapons.
Combined with economic stress, mental-health strain, and chronic uncertainty, these factors have created “fertile ground for escalating violence,” the report reads. In parallel, 2024 saw a worsening of violence against LGBTQ+ individuals, including weapon-based hate crimes concentrated in Tel Aviv-Jaffa.
Even as violence increased, calls to hotlines and social-service centers fell. WIZO attributes this decline to eroding public trust in the very systems meant to protect victims, rather than to any improvement in reality. Personal-security surveys show a drop in women’s sense of safety across all age groups, and a widening gender gap in trust toward law enforcement and judicial institutions.
Sexual harassment in the civil service rose sharply as well, with 432 complaints filed in 2024, up from 377 the previous year – the highest number ever recorded.
Nearly half of domestic-violence offenders in prison received no therapeutic treatment, and most did not receive rehabilitation upon release.
The Index concludes with a direct call to action, urging the government to acknowledge that violence against women is a severe national crisis requiring immediate, coordinated intervention, and identifies four measures Israel must adopt.
Between them, establishing a unified cross-agency data infrastructure; conducting regular national surveys; developing advanced technological risk-assessment tools; and tailoring data and services for diverse communities, including Arab, ultra-Orthodox, and Ethiopian women.
“Without data, there can be no effective policy,” said WIZO, adding that until the state builds such a foundation, efforts to reduce violence will remain fragmented and insufficient.
Responding to both the surge in teen dating violence and the erosion of national data systems, WIZO launched its new “Not a nag, a red flag!” campaign, aimed at reframing teens’ instincts and discomfort as legitimate warning signs, rather than overreaction.
The campaign includes an AI-generated video based on real cases, along with posters, reels, youth-focused activities, and materials distributed nationwide.
While NGOs can support victims and run prevention programs, WIZO stressed that only the government can build the data infrastructure, implement education from primary school through high school, and craft long-term strategies capable of reversing these trends.