For all its liberalism, Israel is a conservative country. This is why news items involving sexual assaults have to be extreme and highly sensational to open the major news broadcasts.
The alleged gang rape in Eilat fits the bill over the fact that the number 30 – the purported number of men involved in the gruesome case – can be inserted into the headlines. This has classified this case alongside a handful of other shocking sexual assault incidents Israel has seen over the years, including the Cyprus scandal last year, and the 1988 gang-rape of a 14-year-old girl in Kibbutz Shomrat, which stunned the nation.
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Israel is a conservative country and as such, it is rattled to the core by a young girl's tears – but does nothing to change the culture that ostensibly leads to such acts. Israel is plagued by an enabling culture and when that leads to a catastrophe, news panels and pundits on all channels saying the exact same thing.
Everyone is shocked, appalled, horrified, worried, vexed, trying to find sense where there is none, and looking for someone or something to blame.
Channel 13's Chen Lieberman, for example, blamed easy access to pornography; on Channel 12, Kinneret Barashi blamed "parental bankruptcy"; Channel 20's Sarah Beck linked rape with the overall loss of modesty; others blamed the education system, the courts, smartphones and the internet, and Kan 11 anchorpeople Sharon Wechsler and Uri Levy analyzed "evil human acts."
The banal preoccupation with sexual offenses, which lead public conversation only in extraordinary cases, prevents us from overcoming clichés and realizing that this is not a black-or-white issue but rather something far more complex.
But no one seems to think of that. At least Channel 13 didn't, when its weekend news broadcast featured four women discussing "rape culture" while sitting alongside former Haaretz columnist Ari Shavit, who himself was at the center of a sexual misconduct scandal in 2018. Shavit remained silent during the debate, giving only the occasional nod at what was said – and no one said a word about his case.
Every channel sent reporters to Eilat to talk to women on the boardwalk about how they are scared to walk down dark streets, and to hear from youth in general about their fondness for alcohol. But this once again missed the point: Forced sexual acts don't take place only in sleazy boutique hotels or dark alleys. They happen everywhere and in many forms – on the bus, in the gym, in the military, in schools, in a nightclub's bathroom, or in a yeshiva.
Sexual violence is multifaceted. In the vast majority of cases, the victims know their attacker, so having young women in Eilat go on camera to say they're "afraid to walk down dark alleys" misses the point of the message.
These acts are not perpetrated solely by drunken teens and men who can't take "no" for an answer. Both men and women are victimized and both men and women victimize others. Gender and sectorial divisions make for unnecessary generalization.
The TV coverage of the Eilat gang rape case illustrates a missed opportunity to use the sheer ghastliness of this incident to evoke a public conversation on boundaries and the lines between right and wrong.
Reality is confusing and the debate must focus on the nature of consent, not the dry criminal code. After all, the dry criminal code is never rattled – not even by a young girl's tears.
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