Na’amat celebrity video campaign urges end to violence against women
The videos teach people what to do if a victim is too scared to ask for help.
By HANNAH BROWNShiri Maimon takes part in a Na'amat video campaign against domestic violence. November 2020.(photo credit: COURTESY NA’AMAT)
Na’amat, a women’s organization, launched a media campaign on Sunday to help stop violence against women with the release of videos featuring some of Israel’s biggest celebrities, ahead of International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women, which will be marked November 25.This campaign is called “My Sister’s Keeper,” and the videos will be shown on media outlets and on social media, such as Na’amat’s Facebook page and a mini-site created for this campaign.The videos are mostly in Hebrew, with one in Arabic with Hebrew subtitles. They feature celebrities from the worlds of acting, singing and modeling, including Shiri Maimon, Moran Atias, Dean Miroshnikov, Dana Frider, Yael Bar Zohar, Maggie Ezerzer, Lital Schwartz, Sandra Sade, Eden Saban, Louis Nofi, Samar Qupty and Roy Assaf. The videos depict fictional situations, but ones that are based on reality.The theme of all the videos is that people realize that a friend or relative is being abused – physically, emotionally and/or economically – but when the victim refuses their offer of help, they have to decide what to do next. The video urges them to call a Na’amat helpline at *9201.The point of the videos is to teach people what to do in the unfortunately common reality that a victim is so scared, depressed and demoralized that she cannot ask for or accept help.Each video introduces a different situation. In the one featuring Miroshnikov, he gets a call from his mother, who tells him that she has asked his father for a divorce and his father has beaten her, but begs him to do nothing. Bar Zohar is getting made up for a television appearance and notices that the makeup artist has a bad bruise on her hand. Frider hears a neighbor berating his wife and threatening her, but when she approaches the wife, the woman tells her not to get involved.This year, there has been a spike in reports of violence against women, especially in the Arab sector, in which 17 women have been killed this year, including one who was murdered by her ex-husband last week, according to the Aman Center for Combating Violence in Arab Society. Domestic violence is reportedly on the rise, especially since the beginning of the coronavirus crisis. A number of women who were murdered or attacked this year had applied for orders of protection against their abusers, which were not granted by police and thousands protested this violence in demonstrations around the country in recent months.Hagit Pe’er, the chair of Na’amat, said: “In recent months, and even more so since the outbreak of the corona crisis, we have witnessed a 100% increase in calls to the emergency lines of various organizations to report domestic violence. The vast majority of referrals concern violence against women, with violence sometimes directed at children as well. The psychological and economic pressures that the coronavirus brought with it turned the lives of hundreds of thousands of women in Israel into an ongoing nightmare. There are women who suffered violence even before the coronavirus and whose homes have now become real prisons, especially during the lockdown periods.”Tamar Beeri contributed to this report.
