On the morning of December 30, 2010, the transformation of Israeli consciousness reached one of its peaks. That morning, the district court convicted former state president Moshe Katzav of serial sexual violence. After four consecutive years of struggle by women's organizations, after a struggle that began with a dubious glance at the complainants against the serial sex offender from the presidential residence, the head of the judges' panel declared that the man is a rapist and a sexual harasser. In the days prior to the judges' decision, we in the women's organizations were full of doubts, overtaken by fears – sobered by unfavorable experiences of the past, when the Israeli courts did not always place complete faith in female and male victims of sexual violence. We stood together outside the courtroom as we heard the ruling whose effect on the public stance on violent sexual phenomena against women in Israeli society remains to be seen. What began with our tremendous doubt regarding the result of the ruling was transformed in less than an hour of waiting to a great breakthrough of satisfaction, of joy at the enormous achievement: no sex offender – even one who is president – is immune to justice and the rule of law. And when the head of a judicial panel stood up and declared that when a woman says NO, she means NO, we experienced for the first time how our feminist approach of long durיe had succeeded in percolating inward through our words, to the senior panel of judges.
The fourteen women complainants against the former president of the state and the twenty women's organizations that set out on a gigantic joint campaign with vigils, protests, petitions to the High Court of Justice, countless press releases, and joint feminist strategies – all of these culminated in a change in consciousness that turned most of the Israeli public, including the judges, into unequivocal supporters of the first conviction of its kind against such a senior government official in Israel. After more than four years of constant struggle, setbacks and gains, we could say on December 30 that the broad feminist alliance succeeded in bringing about a real change in consciousness among the public and at the level of government.
Time will tell what the effect of the decision to convict Moshe Katzav of serial sex crimes will be.
Time will tell how the court decision percolates into the consciousness of judges ruling on other sex crime cases.
Time will tell how the media in Israel will treat violent sex crimes exposed by female complainants and women's organizations.
Time will tell how the Israeli public will behave as long as female victims of sexual violence step forth to reveal the sexual abuse they endured.
Will that skeptical and undermining gaze towards the victims of sexual violence be eradicated? Will the public come to understand that it is a social plague, whose result is that every third woman in Israel is the victim of sexual assault? Will society internalize the understanding that there is an intimate and clear connection between a position of authority – in the president's house, in the army, at the work place, in the family – and the use of senior status to evil ends? It is too early to provide a decisive answer, but there's no doubt that an event of tremendous influence and proportion has just occurred, whose significance is that when women and women's organizations claim that there is an epidemic of sexual violence, when we expose cases of sexual abuse against schoolgirls/teenage girls/women/men in the media, that skeptical glance charging those who expose sexual violence with exaggeration or mendaciousness will be wiped away. With the Katzav Affair nestles securely in society's collective memory, there is clear-cut proof that when women complain of sexual violence that they endured, we – all of us – must clearly acknowledge and declare "All of us, men and women, believe them, all of us are in solidarity with women who dare break out with the secret and take on an individual with senior social standing who harassed them and attacked them sexually."
This struggle, initiated by complainants and women's organizations, snowballed into a broad social consensus that includes women, men and other genders. The struggle is at present focused on the conviction of Moshe Katzav, but one would hope that it will expand to broad support that spans and includes every sex and gender – active and manifest support of every male and female victim of routine sexual violence in society.
As a survivor of sexual abuse in the family, it was a privilege for me to fight in solidarity with Katzav's victims, and to coordinate the campaign of the women's organizations to remove him from government and the public sphere. On the day that the former state president's sentence was rendered, my hands trembled, my eyes welled, because it was a great victory not only for the brave complainants against Katzav, but for everyone whose body and soul has known sexual terror perpetrated by a person of greater authority than oneself – in my case, within my family.
This very conviction, the likes of which we have not yet witnessed, against a man who had been president of the state, burst through the consciousness of our society at the same time that social justice organizations, peace organizations – viewed by those presently in power as left-wing organizations, accomplices of terror – are finding themselves pursued by the government, facing the threat of investigation and becoming outlawed. Thus was the satisfaction derived from Katzav's conviction diluted by a great concern: will the Israeli court relate in this manner towards other political minorities – those who were not victims of sexual violence – but rather pursued by racist violence, political violence, and routine ethnic violence? Will the Israeli courts indeed be able to curb the ill-intended actions of a government in cases that do not involve women being hounded by a senior, serial sex offender, but rather those who are pursued, interrogated, arrested, for protesting other, non-sexual oppressions and occupations? Are other political struggles in Israel viewed as legitimate, and why have we not internalized the clear connection between the oppressive relationships and power that generate sexual violence and the oppressive relationships and power that bring about political-racist violence? At the same time that we are making some headway thanks to the complainants and the struggle of the women's organizations to have a senior government official who committed a sexual crime pay the full price, why are we still so far from recognizing the terrible price paid by countless activists and organizations for the ongoing struggle against all other forms of oppression?
Dorit Abramovitch is a feminist writer, lecturer and campaign coordinator. She is the researcher and writer of the report: Jewish and Jewish-Palestinian Feminist Organizations in Israel published by the Israel office of the Heinrich Boell Foundation. The report includes a sub-chapter on the public campaign for the removal of sex offenders from government. Click for more information and to download the report.