Top leaders from the Israel Women’s Network (IWN) joined the Hadassah Foundation in our New York office on September 25 to discuss shifting needs during wartime, how drafting haredi men may impact women in the Israeli army, and more. IWN will be participating in an interactive symposium on women’s economic security during wartime at HF@25: A Jewish Experience of Gender Justice on Monday, December 9. In addition to three symposia showcasing the work of Hadassah Foundation grant recipients, the 25th anniversary commemoration event will feature Emmy Award-winning actress and human rights activist Debra Messing. Learn more and order tickets here.
Celebrating its 40th anniversary this year, IWN promotes gender equality in the workplace, in public spaces, and in government allocations of resources. Earlier in 2024, IWN was awarded a Visionary Partner grant, a five-year grant for organizations that have a strong track record as Hadassah Foundation grant recipients. Below are highlights from a conversation between Hadassah Foundation Board Member Negar Treister, IWN CEO Tal Hochman, IWN Outgoing Chair Elah Alkalay and IWN Incoming Chair Dafna Hacker. Their biographies, as well as more information about IWN, can be found here. The conversation has been condensed and edited.
Negar: Can you tell us about your work since October 7, 2023?
Tal: On October 7, and the days after, we were all in complete shock. At first each of the workers in the organization just volunteered. I’m a former social worker, so I volunteered at the Shura base where they brought all the bodies to, and I helped families through the process of identifying their loved ones. A few days after that, we started hearing messages and statements from international organizations [that were condemning Israel but not acknowledging the atrocities Hamas committed on October 7, including its gender-based war crimes.] And we were in another shock, I would call it. And we just started drafting letters and writing to whoever we could. And we worked with American Jewish women’s organizations and other Israeli women’s organizations, getting as many signatures as possible.
During that time, we also started collecting evidence and pieces of information, everything we could put our hands on to understand better the gender-based war crimes of October 7. We shared our findings with UN rapporteur, and we met with them via Zoom, and they were reluctant to accept what we already knew. So, we decided that we have to learn as much as possible in order to share it with them.
Elah: The international work that we started after October 7 is something that we are eager to continue with. We realized that before October 7 we didn’t have relationships with feminist organizations outside Israel. I wouldn’t say that’s what caused this situation, but things could have looked different if we had these relationships to begin with. And that is something that we’re working on now, to create meaningful connections with the UN, UN Women, and other international feminist organizations, to talk about the common, shared struggles that we all face as feminists, specifically with the anti-feminist backlash that we’re all experiencing.
Once the dust began settling, we could see that a lot of Israeli women were in a very tight spot in the aftermath of October 7. Obviously, the displaced women were facing challenges, but in addition, around 300,000 men and 63,000 women were drafted into reserve duty. And that created a whole range of issues that we felt had to be addressed. We started a new hotline, the Alice Shavi Line, named for the founder of Israel Women’s Network who passed away just a few days before the October 7 attack.
Tal: We were able to build on a hotline that we already have, our legal workforce hotline, which provides free legal aid in multiple languages for women. When a woman calls, we try to help her with exercising her rights. We tell them which benefits they’re eligible for, and if we know that they’re eligible but they have been declined, then we know that there’s a larger problem and through that we’re able to detect macro-level problems. We have connections and work relationships with the government officials, so we go to them, we tell them what the problem is, and change laws and policies. Just today, an agreement was made by the government regarding women that were drafted to reserve duty while pregnant but didn’t work prior to the reserve time. For example, say a woman was on vacation, or a student, or she was away, and she came back specifically for the warrant to be drafted. When she gave birth, she found out that she’s not eligible for childbirth allowance. So, we drafted a bill, promoted it with a Knesset member, and now, after almost 12 months, it’s signed by the government — from here on, women will receive these allowances, but it’s also retroactive. The law was just signed today, and it started with a call that we received on the hotline.
Negar: Is the situation deteriorating for women in Israel? Or do you think there’s reasons to be hopeful?
Dafna: On the one hand, it’s deteriorating. Before the war, because of this current government, Israel dropped 20 places on international rankings [the World Economic Forum’s Gender Gap Report] from around 60th place to around 80th place. We had Covid, and then we had the judicial or regime revolution, depends how you want to call it, and now we have war. On one hand, we’re witnessing past achievements going down the drain. On the other hand, we know that for the first time, a large group of people are realizing that women’s issues are on the table; it’s mainstream, it’s democracy, and it’s something that liberals in Israel cannot do without or ignore. Before the war erupted, there was a shift in public awareness from people that were right wing who couldn’t care less about gender equality before and now they cared. We see this as an opportunity.
Tal: Right now, we are very worried about how this new effort to draft haredi men into the military could affect women who are in the army. They’re talking about creating units for religious men that women won’t be allowed in. And we’re asking, “Wait, what do you mean women won’t be allowed in? What will happen if it’s a large unit that no women can be included in, not even high positions?” Then it’s not only segregation, but also the exclusion of women from high-ranking positions, which we know already is a big problem in the army. The army has already created gender-segregated small units for religious men. The army now allows a religious male soldier to refuse to serve in a mixed combat unit or drive in the same car with a woman. The threat here is that it will become the norm. The IDF knows it cannot do without women commanders and women in combat units, but now there is this national mission to integrate haredim. So, it’s a really challenging mission, and we are there to insist that it not be at the expense of women’s equality.
Negar: Are there specific priorities for the coming year?
Tal: Last July we were able to get a bill passed that allows judges to require domestic abusers to wear a [surveillance] bracelet to monitor their distance from their victim. It just went into effect now. I’m not going to say that it’s the best bill, but we are happy and proud that it was passed in this government, which has been very difficult to work with on this issue. The issue of domestic violence and violence against women is an issue that transcends political borders. Everyone agrees that it’s something that you have to work to solve. There are so many things that we can do on this issue, and I am optimistic that we can do them.
Dafna: Another strategy we are looking at is recruiting men as allies. It’s time to find ways to engage men in conversations about feminism. I think it’s too early to welcome them to our board, of directors, but I’m imagining a group of allies to whom we can bring issues to their table, and they can give us ideas of how to engage with men of different ages. I’m really looking forward to doing this as a pilot project, and when I told other feminist organizations about, they said, “Oh, yes, you start, and we’ll see. If that works, we might copy it.” Five years ago, some of us may have thought, “Oh, maybe we should shut down all feminist organizations. We are doing so much better than in the past.” And all of a sudden, we realize that it’s not only what is the next frontier, it’s, “How do we prevent the backlash?” We have to have this double mindset: on the one hand, stopping the deterioration, and on the other hand, insisting on moving forward.