GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip — The all-female police unit in Gaza launched a campaign in October dubbed “We Are With You” to protect girls of high school age and older from blackmail by men.

Lt. Col. Nariman Adwan, chief of Gaza's all-female police unit, told Al-Monitor, “The campaign’s primary objective is to provide women with a safe haven if ever blackmailed. We have established a free hotline and held awareness and guidance lectures that targeted schools, universities, wedding halls and workplaces such as hospitals and factories. The main problem that women face is the lack of a safe haven and confidentiality of information shared by female victims of emotional blackmail. The campaign is providing them both." 

The campaign’s media coordinator, Hana Karsoue, told Al-Monitor that the unit's officers approached 33,000 girls and women from all over the Gaza Strip and that 200 complaints have been reported over the hotline to the police unit since the campaign began on Oct. 11.

American psychotherapist Susan Forward wrote in her 2002 book “Emotional Blackmail” that emotional blackmail is “a powerful form of manipulation in which people close to us threaten to punish us for not doing what they want. Emotional blackmailers know [their victims'] vulnerabilities and deepest secrets.”