Data published by the Welfare and Social Affairs Ministry in honor of the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women on Monday showed a decrease in reported cases of domestic violence over the past year, but officials emphasized that this was not an indication of improvement on the issue.
According to the data, which was released last week, there was a 30 percent decrease in women contacting the 118 hotline for domestic violence and an 11% decrease in domestic violence cases opened at the Welfare Ministry between October 7, 2023, and last month.
Fewer women and children were reported to be at shelters for victims of domestic violence, with 726 women and 1,065 children in shelters on October 7 of last year compared with 626 women and 933 children in shelters last month.
Officials in the Welfare Ministry stressed, however, that the lower reporting rates and the fewer women seeking help did not mean that domestic violence in Israel has waned in the past year, but rather that the ongoing war with Hamas — which started on October 7, 2023 — was making women feel less safe to report or seek help for their situation.
A possible explanation offered by the ministry was that the war was making women feel less secure in making a big change to their lives because they didn’t feel safe enough to leave their homes during wartime or were facing economic uncertainty. This was especially true for women who had been evacuated from the north or the south and women who were laid off or put on furlough because of the war.
Another possible explanation was that women felt less comfortable turning to authorities for help, either because they had less trust in them or because they felt their problems were not important enough during a war, and were therefore seeking advice from private sources such as psychologists or religious leaders instead.
Demonstrators take part in a rally ahead of the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women which on November 25, in Rome, November 23, 2024. (AP Photo/Andrew Medichini)
Officials in the Welfare Ministry believe that when the war ends, there will be a big increase in women seeking help in shelters for victims of domestic violence. Anticipating this increase, the ministry has made more rooms available at shelters around the country.
“Most victims, unfortunately, don’t come to the welfare services or seek other services. The numbers are much higher than the data we know of,” the Welfare Ministry’s domestic violence department head, Tally Rosenfelder, told the Walla news site on Monday.
“We know the war has heavily affected women asking for help. Women who are currently stuck in a cycle of violence are in danger. There’s more mental distress, higher levels of stress, the difficult reality of unemployment, and a large rise in weapons in their midst and they feel helpless and are dealing with a higher sense of threat. We know and feel that fewer people are asking for help and are trying to deal with it by themselves. The war is continuing and that doesn’t allow many women to make time for themselves to seek help. Many women are scared to leave the house, they’re facing economic difficulty, and the violence is getting worse,” she said.
While fewer women have reported or sought help for domestic violence, the number of requests to block firearm permits from men who were seeking them has risen dramatically. While social workers only received five such requests in 2023, they received 90 in the past year.
This could indicate an increase in domestic violence, but it could also be a result of National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir’s change to gun permit policies after the war broke out, in which he eased the criteria for being granted a permit, leading to a massive increase in requests.
The Welfare Ministry said that some of the 90 requests to block permits were made after women complained to their social workers that their partners had threatened to get guns now that the criteria had been eased, and use them against the women.
Israelis practice aiming their weapons in preparation for receiving a gun license, The Jerusalem Shooting Range, December 3, 2023. (Mati Wagner / The Times of Israel)
However, the 90 requests came only from families that are already known to the Welfare Ministry, and officials in the ministry estimate that many more women were feeling threatened by their partners obtaining firearms but were too scared to say anything.
The government has taken various steps in relation to domestic violence, not all of them helpful for potential victims.
In July of last year, it passed a law allowing electric monitoring for violent men, but the legislation that passed was watered down compared with an earlier version that it had blocked months earlier. While an average of 850 requests for domestic violence-related restraining orders are submitted every month, the law only allows 25 risk evaluations monthly for whether to monitor a potentially dangerous man.
Ben Gvir also set an annual limit of 200 electric monitors a year.
The national security minister also ceased funding in February to the Michal Sela Forum, named after a woman who was murdered by her partner in 2019. Previously, government funding aided the forum in its two programs to help victims of domestic abuse — one that provided them with a panic button to summon a watch person at a moment’s notice, and another that provided them with a guard dog.
A protest against domestic violence as part of a nationwide strike, in Tel Aviv, December 4, 2018. The sign reads: ‘Electronic tracking [of offenders] saves lives.’ (Miriam Alster/Flash90)
In honor of the day marking the struggle against violence against women, two UN agencies released a report on Monday showing that the deadliest place for women is at home, with 140 women and girls on average killed by an intimate partner or family member per day last year.
Globally, an intimate partner or family member was responsible for the deaths of approximately 51,100 women and girls during 2023, an increase from an estimated 48,800 victims in 2022, UN Women and the UN Office of Drugs and Crime said.
The report said the increase was largely the result of more data being available from countries and not more killings.
But the two agencies stressed that “women and girls everywhere continue to be affected by this extreme form of gender-based violence and no region is excluded.”
AP contributed to this report.
