Commissioner Danino
Commissioner DaninoIsrael news photo: Flash 90

Police Commissioner Lt.-Gen. Yochanan Danino told the Knesset Monday that the matter of "women's exclusion" that has been dominating news editions for the past few weeks is not for the police to solve.

The phrase "women's exclusion" is used by militant feminists with regard to the entire gamut of halakhic rules, traditions, local habits and extreme stringencies (the latter held by some fringe hareidi groups) regarding partial or complete separation between the sexes, complementary gender roles and modesty, as practiced by various Jewish streams and communities.

Speaking in the Knesset's Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, the commissioner said that "We have been dealing with the phenomenon for a long time; the police are not the solution for everything. There is a social problem here that is not connected to the police."

MK Shaul Mofaz (Kadima), who heads the Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, made a sweeping generalizatioin, connectiing "women's exclusion," violence against women and violence against soldiers. This connection is a primary contention of the left, which portrays religious nationalists and now hareidi-religious as brutes who persecute women, harass Arabs and denigrate soldiers. 

"Violence is violence, hatred is hatred and humiliation is humiliation," he said. "And it does not matter if it is turned toward soldiers, women or minorities." Mofaz called on police to carry out "ironclad enforcement" against the culprits involved in "price tag" operations as well as "women's exclusion."