Coalition wives meeting. The symbolic event that, beyond being an important milestone (and sometimes stumbling block) towards the inauguration of the government, usually provides us with many things to laugh about. When there’s nothing to laugh about, the women’s gathering puts out quite a few scandals, rumors and photos that we forget after a month. Open watches.
We did not see Gilat Bennett, who was counting down the days until her husband took office a little over a year ago, this time, not even close, nor the current Prime Minister’s wife Lihya Lapid. This time, our eyes were caught by the incoming Prime Minister’s wife Sara Netanyahu, alongside Yitzhak’s wives Goldknopf, Aryeh Deri, Avi Maoz and of course – the reason why we gathered at this time of the weekend: Ila Ben Gabir, the wife of the chairman of Otzma Yehudit and apparently the incoming minister of internal security.
The net was burning, the winds were storming, and for nothing? Mrs. Ben Gabir arrived at the publicized event, befitting her new position, and even posed for the traditional photo, but she did so with a gun on the lapel of her skirt. Using a wildfire expression will devalue the media buzz that is created after it. Arab social networks shared the photo, many Israelis looked in astonishment at this statement of intentions, almost speechless. But wait, a statement of intent? I think we forgot what we were talking about.
It is hard to digest, but there are people in our promised land who are forced to participate in maintaining their personal safety. It’s sad, even unimaginable, but sometimes it’s inevitable. We all know that even in calmer times in the Judea and Samaria regions, the sector was not exactly satisfied. And all the settlements and all is a completely different story that requires much more than a sentence.
No one will argue if I say that Kiryat Arba is not the safest place in Israel, even today, and a mother of children can and should be able to protect them in this way as well, which is considered completely common in these areas. We can discuss the question of whether the gun should have been in the picture or appeared in another act, sorry for the use of the idiom, but the truth is one – there is a gun and it points to a big problem in countermeasures: if we could sleep peacefully in every N.C. here, the gun would probably have disappeared from the equation.
There is a fairly old study in psychology that examined why during a robbery or a traumatic event, people will tend to remember the weapons in the event more than to identify the person responsible for the incident. Focusing the weapon is called the effect. By the way, this detail makes identification procedures very difficult. And if we return to the main point, it is interesting to understand why we are so caught up in Ayla, without discussing at all the meanings of this object and how much needs to change in order for the residents of Yosh to consider giving it up.
And a word about those who introduced feminism into the story. Yes, women can defend themselves even in 2022, and yes, the composition of the current coalition largely does not promote the fact that female soldiers will lie in ambush alongside their male comrades, but rather monitor from a distance, and everything is much more conservative and the government is going to adopt a different line for the coming years. If it is built at all, there seem to be problems with it. All true.
So why, after all, is there no connection to equal rights, which in my eyes is blessed? Because we compared Ayla in the first second to her husband, who we have already seen with a gun in pictures in the past. The essential difference is that Mrs. Ben Gvir, a person from the settlement, stated a fact without mentioning a single word until it was required, and her life partner, a public figure, turned this accessory into a considerable amount of combustible material, either on purpose or by accident.
If you separate the two, as close as they are, you find that the anger over the picture from the formation is simply a fear that these waving will become routine. If I may bet, it’s probably not going to happen. The really important thing is to give everyone who lives here the feeling that they don’t need a weapon to get through the day safely.
The rules, that big word that we enjoy saying in a living room conversation or in line to tell a book, must stop being just empty talk. On the day when this weapon, which has become a must-have item like a backpack for a considerable part of Israelis, will return to the closet, it will be possible to complain that it should not be seen in any picture. Until then, wait for the shock.