Last modified on Tue 13 Jun 2023 11.20 BSTor months, the massive protests that have taken place in Israel have rallied groups across the country on issues surrounding the supreme court and judicial independence. Amid the uproar and media attention, however, Israeli feminist groups say a crucial element of thehas been lost in the noise, and as a result women’s legal rights are more at stake than they have been in years.
The rabbinic courts follow halacha, Jewish law, and do not allow women to be judges. According to Dr Susan Weiss of the Centre for Women’s Justice, which provides legal aid and advocacy for women in Israel, rules allowing female witnesses are inconsistently applied, and rabbinical judges have barred female witnesses from testifying, even in domestic abuse cases.
Ben Dror said consent was difficult to obtain in ultra-religious communities where women may be pressured to have their cases heard in the rabbinic system. Formally, a woman may decide for herself which court the case goes to, she said, “but informally, if she goes against this, she’s considered a troublemaker in her community, and that means she doesn’t really have equal say”.
But for Palestinian women, she said, “the situation is much more complicated, because we suffer from discrimination anyway”. “They see how the police and government reacts when there is Jewish demonstrations versus when it’s our demonstration … It’s an issue of trust.”