“An absurd decision” was how Hagit Peer, who heads Israel’s leading women’s organization, NAAMAT, described the appointment of a man to head the Knesset Committee on the Status of Women and Gender Equality. Peer was not alone. One by one, women’s advocacy organizations and leading female journalists harshly condemned the decision to name Knesset member Oded Forer of the Yisrael Beitenu party to head the panel. Forer will not only chair the committee; he will be its only male member.
Forer, 43, a confidante of Yisrael Beitenu party Chair Avigdor Liberman, is the second man named to head the committee since it was established in 1992. The first was Likud Knesset (and former minister) member Gideon Saar, appointed in 2006 and generally considered to have done a good job.