Rivlin & Gal-On Unite on Human Rights Issue

Reuven Rivlin

Zehava Gal-On

Marrying in Israel is a religious matter. Still, people often go to Cyprus or elsewhere for civil weddings, and return with marriages that are fully valid in Israel. But an intermarriage cannot be performed in Israel unless one party converts to the religion of the other. When an Israeli-Jewish woman converted recently to marry an Israeli-Muslim man, their union became controversial, drawing the protests of a group called the “Organization for Prevention of Assimilation in the Holy Land” or Lehava. The wedding party hired 14 security guards and hundreds of police further secured them after Lehava was enjoined by a court order in the Rishon Lezion regional court to demonstrate no closer than 200 meters.

The Deputy Minister of Deputy Minister of Religious Affairs Eli Ben-Dahan explained on TV yesterday that “experience shows that women who end up marrying Muslim men return home bruised and battered”. He also said that mixed marriage was a “silent Holocaust”, no less.

I understand the immediate necessity to find a pail to vomit in, but before we do that, let’s look at the numbers. Unsurprisingly, they don’t match up with Ben-Dahan’s statements. Based on records from the Interior Ministry, there were 16 mixed marriages registered in 2012. The number of battered women reported during that year? Over 200,000. And for the sake of proportionality, during that same year, 19 women were murdered by their partner. In not one of those cases was the couple of mixed marriage.

So here are some statistics for Eli Ben-Dahan: if you’re a Jewish woman, there is a 99.99% chance that whoever beats you will be a Jewish man. And there is a 100% chance that if a relative kills you, it will also be a Jewish man. And what are the odds that the Deputy Minister of Religious Affairs of the State of Israel will stop looking under your covers and focus on dealing with the real causes of domestic abuse? Zero.