Why Karmiel Women Wasted Their Lucky Strike!

There are 120 seats in the Karmiel Municipality auditorium and today each one was filled, with more people sitting on adjacent steps facing the stage.


It was gratifying to see a full noon-time house of local women along with some men, including new Mayor Moshe Koninsky, helping to protest against apparent government indifference to the current, unprecedented and ever-escalating violence against women throughout Israeli society.


But those present wasted a golden opportunity. Today's Karmiel town hall crowd was like a metaphor for the 120 Members of the Knesset who enjoy the sound of their own voices bouncing off the four walls of the debating chamber, but have delivered barely 10% of a promised NIS 250M towards women’s shelters, extra help hotlines, additional manpower for police investigations into domestic violence and generally heightened public awareness of the ever-worsening problem.


This was an official timed strike, protesting most immediately against the 24 murders in 2018 - an average of two per month - of women in circumstances of extreme domestic violence and abuse.


Naila Awwad, head of the Association of Women Against Violence, has said that the proportion of Arab women murdered is double that of the general population and that ten of the slain women were Arabs.


But for those left to grieve, the phenomenon is simply a matter of degree and many reading this will surely confirm that the same inherent evil bedevils all strata of every society, be it here in Israel or anywhere else on the globe.


So why did the Karmieli protestors venture onto the municipality concourse only for a hasty photo-call? Why did they meet indoors away from public view unlike those publicising the same issue some weeks ago, who met outside the busy Lev Karmiel shopping mall on Sderot Nesei'ei Yisrael?


As we left the auditorium well before the meeting ended, a fellow Anglo retiree voiced a general feeling when she commented that a demonstration should always be outdoors, not only to publicise the relevant cause but to educate other people to its value.


How can that be achieved behind closed doors?


I - we - returned home very disappointed.


Natalie Wood (04 December 2018)