Lapid says PM must fire ministers who attack IDF, touts bills on gender discrimination

Opposition Leader Yair Lapid called on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu Wednesday to fire ministers who attack the Israel Defense Forces chief of staff and top officers.

Such verbal assaults have been on the rise in recent days over the unrest in the military relating to the government’s planned broad judicial overhaul.

“The vile and false attacks on the chief of staff in recent days, including today, by senior government ministers, coalition MKs, and even the prime minister’s son, are a direct attack on the army, Israeli society, national resilience and national security,” Lapid said.

“Nothing is sacred in the eyes of these people. They have no boundaries,” he said.

Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant issued a joint statement Tuesday defending the IDF and the security establishment, following repeated attacks on top IDF brass from within the coalition and from the premier’s son Yair in recent days.

The mounting attacks come as the IDF has repeatedly voiced concern over damage to military readiness caused by some reservists’ refusals to carry out their duties in protest of the hardline coalition’s controversial judicial overhaul legislation. Some in the coalition have railed against the army’s ostensible failure to clamp down on the phenomenon.

Lapid also announced Wednesday a proposed legislative package aimed at combating discrimination against women, and blamed the government for recent incidents of mistreatment of women in public spaces.

At an emergency meeting convened at the parliament, the Yesh Atid party chair announced 12 bills he plans to put forward when the Knesset returns from its summer break “that will fight against discrimination and hatred against women.” Because it is opposition-led legislation, the coalition may prevent it from being advanced in the Knesset (while possibly proposing its own measures).

The package includes a bill that defines discrimination against women in the public sphere as sexual harassment, and sets a five-year prison sentence and NIS 500,000 ($130,000) fine as punishment for such an act.

Other bills are set to define discrimination based on gender identity, sexual orientation, or religious belief and ban activities that promote such discrimination in the state education system; set quotas for female representation on the boards of public firms, construction planning committees and local government councils; and seek to reduce the gender pay gap.

Lapid called recent incidents of discrimination towards women “only the tip of the misogynistic iceberg that we are crashing into.”

Lapid blasted the “Erasure of women from billboards, enactment of segregation in public areas and even here in the Knesset, where conferences were held and women were not allowed to enter.”

“It’s not a coincidence that this is all happening now. It is a message that comes from above, from the government. It’s policy,” Lapid charged.

“The coalition has two parties in which women can not be elected at all,” he added in reference to the Haredi parties. “Look at the number of female ministers in this government, the number of MKs, and the number of ministry directors-general. They don’t appoint senior female officials.”

Moreover, “the women that are there suffer chauvinistic insults,” he claimed.

Just six of the 32 members of the cabinet — the most right-wing in Israel’s history — are women: Transportation Minister Miri Regev, Environmental Protection Minister Idit Silman, Public Diplomacy Minister Galit Distel Atbaryan, Intelligence Minister Gila Gamliel, National Missions Minister Orit Strock and Minister for the Advancement of the Status of Women May Golan.

Only two directors-general of the ministries are women.

The two ultra-Orthodox parties in the coalition, Shas and United Torah Judaism, have no women on their electoral slates, while the far-right religious Otzma Yehudit has only one. Among the 64 MKs in the coalition, just nine are women.

Lapid’s announcement came after a string of recent instances of discrimination against women on public transportation in Israel that drew condemnation from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Miri Regev, who vowed punishment against those responsible.

Yesh Atid MK Meirav Cohen, a former social equality minister who was also at Wednesday’s Knesset meeting, slammed Idit Silman’s recent proposal for allowing segregated swimming after regular opening hours at natural springs in the country’s national parks.

Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara vetoed the plan in its current form, stating it would require explicit legislation.

“The demand for [such segregation] does not come from women,” Cohen said. “I walk around nature, I see religious and secular men and women there, together, vacationing, and it’s all good,” she said.

“Don’t create a new standard that coerces religious and Haredi women. Don’t create the standard because nobody asked for it,” she charged.

Cohen said she may have understood the move “if [the government] really did respect everyone,” while slamming the coalition for not dealing with other issues of religion and state, such as providing a separate space for women to read from the Torah at the Western Wall, providing public transportation on Shabbat to help those that can’t afford cars, or providing an alternative to citizens who cannot marry under religious authorities.

“We are not marching toward being like Hungary or Poland,” Cohen said, referencing countries that have experienced democratic backsliding. “We are marching toward being like Iran, because it comes from religious fanaticism.”

National discourse on gender discrimination surged after a bus driver Sunday ordered a group of teenage girls to sit in the back and cover themselves up due to their supposedly immodest dress (the girls were wearing shorts and sleeveless tops). In a recording of the incident, which occurred on a Nateev Express 885 line from Ashdod to Kfar Tavor, the driver could be heard dismissing the girls’ complaints when one told him she felt humiliated.

“Enough with this nonsense, you don’t have religious people in your home. You live in a kibbutz, detached from the world. You live in a Jewish state and you should respect the people living here. The fact that you live in a kibbutz and were raised this way, I’m sorry for you,” the driver could be heard saying.

Also Sunday, Tzefi Erez, an 88-year-old woman from Givatayim, told the Kan public broadcaster that a bus driver repeatedly ignored her when she asked him if she had gotten on the correct line. When the woman’s husband asked the driver why he wasn’t responding to her, the driver said that he refuses to speak to women.

“I was deeply hurt. I am a Holocaust survivor,” the woman said. “I’ve suffered enough… I came to the State of Israel, and suddenly I’m in Iran. Tomorrow they’ll tell me to cover my face.”

Both companies have apologized for the incidents and vowed to investigate and ensure they do not repeat themselves.

חרדים בטיסה עכשיו מנסים להזיז אותי ממושב למושב. כי אני אישה. יונייטד אירליינס אגב לא מטפלים בזה. אומרים לי שבגללי הטיסה לא תצא. בושה. pic.twitter.com/e6BsnMxOuU

— נריה קראוס Neria Kraus (@NeriaKraus) August 15, 2023

Times of Israel staff contributed to this report.