The recent protest against the government focused on women’s rights and the “Handmaid’s Tale” imagery. The message was clear: any changes to the legal system could lead to oppression against women. However, the perception of the Supreme Court as the protector of women’s rights is merely fiction.
One translation company had a memorable client named Michel Sebag, a Monaco divorcee who held his wife captive for seven years. The Rabbinical Court in Israel lured Sebag to the country and then issued a restraining order against him to free his wife. However, the High Court ruled in favor of Sebag, choosing political gain over a woman’s freedom.
This is not the only time the Supreme Court has ruled against women. It has repeatedly stopped government initiatives to reduce illegal immigration and has allowed physical assault against women by illegal immigrants to continue. Even when the Supreme Court chooses to protect women’s rights, it favors certain individuals over others.
Therefore, we must leave the drama and emotional manipulation behind and engage in a respectful and honest dialogue to preserve the rights of all citizens, both men and women alike. Marching in red robes and white bonnets will not solve anything. It is up to us to shape the government that will protect women’s rights.
Leah Aharoni is the founder and CEO of the organization “Our People” to help immigrants from Russia and Ukraine.
Women’s rights and the images from “The Handmaid’s Tale” took center stage in the protest against the government. The message is clear – any change in the legal system will lead to oppression against women.
Unfortunately, the perception of the Supreme Court as the bastion of women’s rights is science fiction and fantasy.
It doesn’t happen often that a customer is remembered after 20 years. But one fine morning, in 2004, the translation company that I owned at the time received a thick file of documents for translation from a client named Michel Sebag. A quick look at the documents revealed that Sebag was a divorcee from Monaco who anchored his wife Chantal Biton for 7 years.
In a brilliant exercise designed to free the woman from the shackles, the Rabbinical Court in Israel enticed Sebag to come to Israel and then issued a restraining order against him in the hope that this would force him to grant the divorce. Sebag did not remain liable and was about to petition the High Court and for that he contacted us with a request to obtain the documents of the case.
Since we translated documents for several cases of divorce refusals, we checked the story with the rabbis we worked with in France and when the facts matched, we refused to provide Sabeg with the service.
Seven months later, the High Court ruled in favor of Michel Sabag and allowed him to leave Israel without divorcing Shantal. When the judges were faced with the choice between restoring the woman’s freedom and reducing the authority of the rabbinical courts, the judges chose the second, political option. Judge Ila Proccia stated that the rabbinic courts in Israel do not have the authority to hear the cases of foreign citizens. Even though the courts in Israel, which possess a multitude of tools to make disobedient husbands divorce their wives, are the last hope of many embattled women abroad, the High Court chose to take away from the rabbis the possibility of using these tools for the benefit of women.
In her choice to promote the political agenda, Judge Proccia sentenced Chantal Beaton to life imprisonment, who has not yet received the divorce even 20 years after the act.
The court could have determined otherwise. In a minority opinion, Judge Amnon Rubinstein found the legal grounds to confirm the authority of the rabbinical courts. Moreover, only a year before, Judge Aharon Barak himself ruled in favor of the rabbinical courts in the Khobani case, stating that the courts can hear alimony cases involving foreign citizens.
Fortunately, it was the Knesset that a year later returned some of the authority to the rabbinic courts so that they could help more women. For Chantal Beaton it was already too late.
But that was not the end of Judge Procchia’s war against the rabbinical courts at the expense of women who are refused a divorce. In the case of the Levy family in 2005, together with two other judges, Deborah Berliner and Miriam Naor, Judge Procacia annulled the order of the Rabbinical Court ordering Hezekiel Levy to divorce his wife Rivka. Although Hezekiel Levy vowed not to grant Rebecca a divorce until the day he dies, the three High Court judges jumped at the opportunity to criticize the rabbinical courts at the expense of another woman’s freedom.
The rulings of the Supreme Court against women were not limited only to the issue of divorce refusals. Over the past two decades, despite repeated evidence indicating that infiltrators from Africa are involved in sex crimes and rape 4 times more than Israeli citizens, the High Court of Justice has repeatedly canceled the multitude of government initiatives to reduce illegal immigration from Sudan and Eritrea.
As a result, an average of over 70 women each year have to suffer forever from the court’s devastating decision not to support the government’s policies and the rule of law. These figures do not include the hundreds of cases of physical assault each year committed by illegal immigrants at a rate three times higher than their share of the population, often against older women. Irreversible harm to women is also not a consideration against the political choice of the High Court.
However, even when the Supreme Court chooses to protect women’s rights, in its eyes there are women who are more equal than others. In recent years, together with a group of other women, I have been involved as a party in the High Court case regarding the prayer arrangements at the Western Wall. At the last hearing about a month ago, Judge Dafna Barak-Erz seriously asked the representative of the prosecutor’s office why the police do not evacuate all the worshipers, including thousands of women, from the Western Wall plaza To make room for a few dozen women of the Western Wall.
At first I thought I hadn’t heard right. But when I saw the stunned looks of my friends who looked at each other in complete shock at the very question, I realized again, that women’s rights, especially those on the wrong side of the political agenda, are the last thing that interests the judges. Women and their basic rights are not considered when they contradict the court’s ambition to create a certain social order and engineer the Israeli reality.
And so, my sisters, who march in the red robes and the white bonnets, I say, please leave the fantasy and come down to the ground of reality. Israel is not going to turn into Gilead and it is likely that the Supreme Court is not the one who will save you.
Only if we leave the drama and the emotional manipulations, only if we stand with both feet on the ground, only if we conduct an honest and perhaps sometimes harsh, but always respectful dialogue, will we be able to reach agreements on the form of government that will preserve the rights of all citizens, women and men alike.
Leah Aharoni is the founder and CEO of an association Our People To help immigrants from Russia and Ukraine.