By JPOST EDITORIAL
We mustn’t lose sight of the risk that disrespect for the law might spread to other segments of society.
The Knesset Committee on the Status of Women last week turned its attention to Israel’s Beduin. The emergent picture was no less than shocking. Most Israelis wouldn’t imagine such repression within our enlightened country.
Pro forma, we have progressive laws that are enforced vigorously and equitably. However, beneath this enlightened surface lurks a reality so unseemly that it’s hardly inaccurate to speak of another country-with-the-country, where our system of justice is plainly absent.
That country-within-the-country is mostly located in the Negev, but not exclusively so. It thrives wherever Beduin populations congregate. In those areas our laws appear all but irrelevant.
The statistics speak for themselves. More than 70 percent of all Beduin women in Israel are wed by coercion.
Their preferences or aversions are never taken into account.
According to an exhaustive two-year survey conducted by the Itach (Women Lawyers for Social Justice) NGO, 85% of Beduin women report that they are subjected to severe physical and/or psychological violence. Of these, 90% were openly battered in public. Read more
Categories: Asia, Israel, Middle East
The Negev Bedouin (Badū an-Naqab) are traditionally pastoral semi-nomadic Arab tribes living in the Negev region in Israel who hold close ties to the Bedouin of the Sinai Peninsula. Most of the Negev Bedouin tribes migrated to the Negev from the Arabian Desert, Transjordan, Egypt and the Sinai from the eighteenth century onwards. They comprise 12% of the Arab citizenry of Israel.