Opinion: Government impasse prevents implementation of life-saving programs to mitigate domestic violence, programs that hadn’t received funding since 2017 and could save the next victim
Two weeks into 2020 and another Israeli woman has been murdered.
What could have been going on in her mind, as she stood in the kitchen and her spouse squeezed the trigger repeatedly, unleashing a barrage of bullets at her torso – just because she told him she wanted to leave him.
He was just another man that could not come to terms with the thought that his partner would have a life without him. He murdered her and then took his own life.
“He got drunk and murdered my mother,” her son cried out when he came looking for her after she did not pick up her phone. He found his mother had become another statistic, another marginal entry in a long list of stories that we cannot bear to hear again, so we move on.
We’ve been here before. We’ve read these same headlines.
We’ve become used to women being killed by their spouses or other family members. Our instincts dulled by our familiarity with the predatory, murderous gaze of these men out to end their partners’ lives. So, we keep our guard down.
Some feminists will cry out on social media, and newspapers will recount the tale in ordered columns, and life will go on until the next murder.
Albert Einstein once said that “insanity is doing the same thing over-and-over-again, but expecting different results,” and as always, Einstein was right.
Being stuck in a loop for an entire year, with no functioning government that could take any of the necessary steps to fight this, is enough to bring a country to the brink of madness. It can also condemn it to a deep moral and practical stagnation.
Another woman was murdered on Friday, and we’ve barely kicked off the year.
Perhaps if there was a government in place, there would be someone to retrieve, clear off the dust and implement life-saving programs to mitigate domestic violence, programs that hadn’t received funding since 2017, programs that could save the next victim.
Since we are on the brink of another election, a third in a year, it may be an opportune moment to mention the dismal number of women in the political echelons and the fact that the next Knesset, that will be sworn in after the March 2 election, will have even fewer women in the plenum.
This will likely influence the collective consciousness and increase the ever-eroding gender equality.
As reported by Ynetnews