Arab Israeli Women Fight Domestic Violence
“Violence against women is not the whole of the problem, but just a symptom,” says Arab feminist activist Aida Tuma-Suliman.
Israelis were shocked twice last week. The first time occurred when the bodies of two Bedouin toddlers were discovered after they were allegedly killed by their father. The second time occurred once it became clear that the chronicle of this death was also foretold. If the Israeli police had taken seriously the girls’ mother, Abir Dandis, then Osnad, 3, and Rimas, 5, would still be alive.
On the night before the murder, the girls’ mother appeared at the police station in the southern town of Arad to lodge a complaint against her husband. “I’m afraid he’ll kill the girls,” she said. The tragedy is that she ran up against a wall of indifference. The Israeli media reported that the policemen didn’t even bother to leave the station to investigate her charges.
Based on interviews that the mother later gave to the Israeli media, what emerges is a case of abandonment and neglect. She told Israeli daily Haaretz that she also lodged at least six or seven complaints at the police station in Ma'ale Adumim, near where she lives, but all her efforts to warn the authorities were met with dithering and derision. “I saw the contempt in their eyes,” she said, choking on her tears. “Everyone I spoke to ignored me.”
Abir’s nightmare is not over yet. Her husband, the prime suspect in the murder, has fled. Though the hunt for him continues, it has yet to uncover any leads. Meanwhile, Israel’s chief of police, Inspector General Yohanan Danino, has decided to remove the head of the Arad police station, along with his deputy and the head of the station’s bureau of investigations.
