African illegals in leftist-organized protest, January 2014.
African illegals in leftist-organized protest, January 2014.Yonatan Sindel, Flash 90

Five illegal immigrants from Eritrea were charged Friday in the Central District Court with the abduction and rape of a young woman they encountered at a club in Rishon Letzion six weeks ago. Israel's normally ubiquitously vocal feminist leaders have said nothing about the case – and this is causing a backlash among women.

According to the charge sheet, the woman went to a pool hall with a male friend one night in late June and was intoxicated when she left the club. She headed to a shawarma stand with her friend when the five – aged 22 to 28 – pounced on her and dragged her to a room two of them live in, which they had prepared a short time earlier for this purpose.

They locked her in the room and raped her, one after the other, for an hour and 40 minutes, with the victim alternately screaming and passing out from the horror. The attack only stopped when the woman's male acquaintance showed up, looking  for her. The assailants told him that she was not there but he heard her screaming for help. It was only then that the door opened and the woman left the apartment.

According to the charge sheet, the attackers pounced on the complainant “like beasts of prey.” The attack was carried out with planning and sophistication, according to the charge sheet, seeing as the attackers waited for a moment in which the woman's companion was distracted in order to carry her off.

'Where are you???'

Galit Distal Atbaryan, who writes in the NRG website, wrote a scathing Facebook post following the news, and the conspicuous silence of leftist-feminist MKs, in the wake of one of Israel's most horrific rape cases. The post was then made into an opinion article on NRG and has also been picked up by the popular Hatzinor Facebook page.

"My dear female Knesset members, where are you??”, she asked, noting that the women of southern Tel Aviv, where a large community of illegal African immigrants resides, have complained of their fear for years, but have been accused of racism by the Left, which supports the Africans and leads their struggle against deportation.

Elderly women who live in these neighborhoods no longer leave home after sunset, she wrote – certainly not unaccompanied. Young women who live there know that if they come home in the evening, “the good scenario is that some random Eritrean will disrobe in front of them or harass them.”

The "bad scenario" is what happened in Rishon Letzion.

In addition, wrote Atbaryan, there are rumors of “incomprehensible” abuse that is endured by female drug addicts and prostitutes in the regions inhabited by the illegal immigrants.

"And I am really asking, where are you??? Feminist MKs who are supposed to be the voice that represents all women, where are you? Why are you silent? How is it possible that you scream misogyny-shmisogyny about every retarded commercial but a woman who was cruelly raped by five men does not interest you? How can that be?”

Named and shamed

Atbaryan listed the leading leftist feminist MKs from Meretz and Labor by name: "Zehava Galon, where are you?? Where is your burning decisiveness? Where has your fire disappeared to? Tamar Zandberg, where are you?? Why were you silent? What are you afraid of? That defense of the women of southern Tel Aviv will be interpreted, God forbid, as an attack on the Eritreans? What about you, Miss Yechimovich? How is it that you have not uttered a word since this rape?”

Atbaryan noted that if the case had involved five Jewish settlers who had raped an Eritrean, these women would be carrying out “a catfight over every vacant shred of a microphone,” and they “would not allow it to leave the headlines, and justly so.”

"But now, a roar of silence from wall to wall. Because this needs to be known: women's right are an excellent thing, but the politically correct regime is more important. A large female public is living in fear and under terror today; none of you would send her daughters to these neighborhoods at night. Not one.

"But the poor women who live there have no lobby. Women in distress are less sexy than an Eritrean infiltrator.”

Leftist NGOs have been investing great efforts and funds over the years in organizing African illegal immigrants to protest against deportation and have been filing court motions on their behalf and funding media campaigns, to block legislation aimed at their detention and deportation.  

A representative of the southern neighborhoods, Sheffi Paz, who was herself a member of Meretz for 40 years, attacked the feminist MKs in a Knesset debate last year: