The most important achievement of the women’s protest that swept across the country Dec. 4 was the intensity of its media coverage. It topped the news — even if that same morning the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) launched a military operation along the border with Lebanon to destroy Hezbollah’s network of tunnels penetrating Israeli territory.
Every available studio was used to provide live coverage of the security incident in the north. As such, it was only natural that this would draw public attention. After all, Israelis had long been preparing themselves for just such a military conflagration. The leaders of a coalition of women’s groups skipped a beat, fearing that the tense security situation would sideline public attention from their campaign. In the past couple of days, they actually felt the seething outrage at the government’s apparent inability to act against the phenomenon of violence against women.
