“An absurd decision” was how Hagit Peer, who heads Israel’s leading women’s organization, NAAMAT, described the appointment of a man to head the Knesset Committee on the Status of Women and Gender Equality. Peer was not alone. One by one, women’s advocacy organizations and leading female journalists harshly condemned the decision to name Knesset member Oded Forer of the Yisrael Beitenu party to head the panel. Forer will not only chair the committee; he will be its only male member.

Forer, 43, a confidante of Yisrael Beitenu party Chair Avigdor Liberman, is the second man named to head the committee since it was established in 1992. The first was Likud Knesset (and former minister) member Gideon Saar, appointed in 2006 and generally considered to have done a good job.

News of Forer’s appointment on June 8 set off an uproar on social media platforms and talk shows, generating intense arguments over whether a man should fill a post that has become one of the few bastions of women’s leadership in the male-dominated legislature. Previous panel chairs, such as the Likud’s Gila Gamliel and Limor Livnat, were leading female lawmakers who went on to become government ministers.

Whereas Saar’s appointment 14 years ago was somewhat of a pioneering experiment that drew praise from many women, Forer finds himself facing an angry tsunami intensified by the era of social media.