MK Ronit Tirosh (Kadima), who served as Director-General of the Education Ministry under then-Education Minister Limor Livnat and then-Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, has issued a sharp educational response to the murder of a 16-year-old girl in Ashkelon on Wednesday night.
The girl was among a group of girls who were drinking alcoholic beverages – though family members say she was not a drinker – and was later found dead in a grove outside the city. 26-year-old Nikolai Dreishov, who offered to drive her home, has been arrested and charged with the murder. Dreishov’s lawyer said Dreishov attempted to force himself upon her, then panicked when she resisted, and “pressed her throat too hard.”
Dreishov is a divorced father of a 7-year-old girl; sources in the Ashkelon Jewish community say it is not known if he is among the large non-Jewish Russian population in the city. At the court hearing where his custody was extended for 12 days, he said he regrets what happened.
MK Tirosh wrote to the Chairman of the Cable and Satellite TV Council that if the many offensive drinking scenes are not removed from a particular TV series entitled "The Champion," she would work to pass legislation to this end.
“To my sorrow,” Tirosh wrote, “though we are shocked at the direction the youth is going, we ignore the dangerous roots that sprouted the seeds of violence. It cannot be that at night our children watch violence, drinking and running away from reality via alcohol – and then they go out, drink and act violently, and we wake up in the morning, click our tongues and complain, ‘What has happened to us?’”
“It’s not enough to call upon the youth not to drink alcoholic beverages,” Tirosh’s letter continues. “We have to look within ourselves how to lower the violence level. Otherwise, by the very fact that we close our eyes we become one of the factors that encourage violence.”
Tirosh had something to say to the screenwriters as well: “I would expect that they bear in mind the children who watch and who see the characters as people to emulate, but unfortunately don’t distinguish between fiction and reality.”
Orlev Calls Special Session
MK Zevulun Orlev (Jewish Home), Chairman of the Knesset Education Committee, announced that he would convene an emergency session in light of what he called the “grave phenomenon of youth addiction to alcohol, leading to murder.” He said the country has the tools to solve the problem.
President Shimon Peres and Education Minister Gideon Saar also related to the murder by calling upon young students to make sure not to enter into dangerous situations. Peres said, “One drop too much can mess up your life. It gives you nothing…”