MK Julia Melinovsky (Yisrael Beytenu) praised the decision of the Defense Ministry to recognize nationalistically motivated sexual assaults as acts of terror.
"I congratulate the Defense Ministry for finding the courage to recognize that sexual assault can have a nationalistic or racial background. We must recognize the phenomenon of assaults and sexual harassment of women by minorities in mixed cities and in towns near Arab villages." she said.
"The right way to tackle the problem is to first acknowledge its existence, because when you do not you about a phenomenon, you cannot handle it." she added, referring to the claims of Police Chief Superintendent Ayelet Orenstein that incidents of sexual assault against Jewish women by Arab men are on the decline.
She accused Orenstein of giving a "politically correct" response to Knesset inquiries on the phenomenon rather than the true statistics. "The facts which have accumulated in my office recently include dozens of testimonies indicating that this phenomenon is [more] widespread [than Orenstein suggested]."
Melinovsky added that the official data of the Jerusalem District of the Israel Police came showed more than 500 incidents of racially motivated assaults and sexual harassment by Arab men against Jewish women between 2006-2014 just in the Jerusalem area, including 70 cases of rape.
"You can not ignore the difficult testimonies of women from different cities from around the country who have experienced racially motivated sexual assault and harassment as was presented only a month ago at the Committee on the Status of Women, which held a discussion which I organized." she added. "It is important to note that many politician from the Joint Arab List participated in this report in an attempt to deny the existence of this phenomenon and to undermine the very existence of this important discussion."