It is mid-August 2025, and I am exhausted. For nearly three relentless years, Israel has endured national elections, pandemic, civil unrest, war and a slide into autocracy. Since November 2022, the liberal public has fought to curb Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s judicial overhaul. Then came Oct. 7—a day of massacre, abductions and sexual violence—followed by nearly two years of war with Gaza. The war now seems to serve no purpose but Netanyahu’s political survival.
My recurring response: This is unfathomable. That reaction arises with every survivor testimony, every atrocity in Gaza, every authoritarian decree from my government and every grotesque headline from Trump’s America. Language fails. There are no words.
And now this: Netanyahu has nominated Likud Knesset member Hanoch Milwidsky to chair the Knesset Finance Committee, despite allegations of sexual assault and a cover-up in his extremist cult. His only qualification? Loyalty. Political misconduct has long been normalized here. But ignoring credible sex-crime allegations? That’s a new low.
Misogynistic Policies
Netanyahu’s seventh government detests women. Since coalition agreements were signed, it has pursued a patriarchal vision rooted in religious nationalism, restricting women’s rights in nearly every domain.
It narrowed domestic-abuse protections, halted legislation on financial violence in intimate relationships, withdrew Israel’s intention to join the Istanbul Convention on violence against women and changed government job ads to male-only language. Now it is pushing to empower rabbinical courts — institutions that exclude women entirely and rely on ancient laws crafted by men only — to adjudicate civil disputes.
Political misconduct has long been normalized here. But ignoring credible sex-crime allegations? That’s a new low.
Other proposed laws would ban LGBTQ-themed school materials and allow businesses to deny service based on religious beliefs. That could mean requiring “modest dress” to enter a store, or refusing hotel rooms to same-sex couples, contraceptives to unmarried women and fuel to Muslim customers.
The government’s response to the gendered effects of war is equally callous. Women and children in Gaza face displacement, hunger and failing health care. In Israel, wives of reservists in the Israel Defense Forces have spent months parenting alone. The Oct. 7 atrocities against Israeli women were almost silenced until Israeli feminist activists insisted on exposing them. Sexual violence in evacuation zones in Gaza and against Palestinian men in Israeli detention has gone largely unaddressed.
Men at the Top
Women are being systematically excluded from power. Their representation in government is at a historic low. Three coalition parties — Shas, United Torah Judaism and Noam — don’t allow female members, categorically and overtly. Women are also generally absent from their staff. There are no women in the war cabinet. This violates Israel’s 2005 law that implemented U.N. Resolution 1325, which mandated women’s inclusion in national security decisions.
The government has moved to eliminate term limits for state rabbis — positions barred to women under the predominant conservative interpretation of halakhah, backed by Israeli law — and increased funding for these state-funded posts. It has advanced affirmative action for rabbinically ordained men. Meanwhile, women vanish from textbooks, billboards and campaign ads. Under the guise of multiculturalist tolerance, their symbolic presence is now politically inconvenient.
Misogyny runs deep. One of Netanyahu’s closest confidants, Nathan Eshel, was convicted of secretly photographing under women’s skirts. In a speech on gender violence, Netanyahu said: “Even animals, you don’t beat. Women and children are also animals with rights.”
His wife, Sara Netanyahu, insists on being called the “first lady,” a title without basis in the Israeli governmental structure or tradition. She intervenes in state matters and participates in national security meetings without clearance. Appointments to top posts often depend on her favor, assessed by their deference to her. Women candidates whom she deems too dangerously attractive and a possible competition for her husband’s attention are disqualified. Her public appearances are choreographed with taxpayer-funded makeup and styling teams, and her officially released photos are heavily airbrushed to the point that it has become a meme on social networks to compare between the original and the photoshopped versions.
In March 2023, after she was forced to stay in a Tel Aviv hair salon for a few hours due to a loud but nonviolent protest, her son Avner posted: “Where are the women’s organizations?”
The few women in Netanyahu’s coalition resemble Phyllis Schlafly or Aunt Lydia from The Handmaid’s Tale. One minister supports massive budgets for “family purity” programs. Another coalition MK promotes subsidized egg freezing for religious women deemed “late to marry,” stating: “Full revenge and complete victory require adding more and more Jewish names and lives. We mustn’t give up on no woman or baby.” [In other words: “We must provide every woman the opportunity to reproduce and not give up on any potential unborn baby.”]
She also promotes expanding gender-segregated academic programs beyond the bachelor’s degree level, into master’s degree and Ph.D. levels. Yet another is known for her aggressive and humiliating cross-examination techniques of sexual assault survivors as a defense attorney.
When Israeli girls look up, they find few role models. The erasure of women is not incidental; it is intentional. Netanyahu’s politics rely on intertwining Jewish supremacy, male dominance and militarized nationalism. Each ideology reinforces the others. Together, they sustain his grip on power.
Gender Is a Blind Spot of the Protest
Despite this dire picture, gender has been a blind spot in Israel’s protest movement. Feminist and LGBTQ groups, such as Women Building an Alternative, have created striking visuals — like cloak processions inspired by The Handmaid’s Tale — but the mainstream protest has focused on judicial mechanics.
The politicization of judicial appointments, limiting court review and weakening the attorney general are serious concerns. But they remain abstract and technocratic. What’s missing is a visceral narrative: how these changes will harm women, LGBTQ individuals and marginalized communities.
Had the protest connected the dots between judicial overhaul and patriarchal theocracy, more people might have joined.
Once judicial oversight collapses, the government can pursue its broader agenda: annexing occupied territories, waiving the ultra-Orthodox from the draft, ending Netanyahu’s corruption trial without consequences and entrenching religious law, with the traditional family at its core. That means fewer protections from sexual violence, expanded gender segregation, strict modesty codes and replacing liberal civil law with patriarchal religious law.
The anti-war discourse has also failed to highlight gendered harms. Hostage release and military strategy dominate. These are indeed primary subjects. Still, nearly nothing is said about the emotional, economic and reproductive toll of war. Few speak of giving birth under fire, raising children without food or medicine or the total collapse of health care and education systems.
This omission is more than regrettable; it’s a missed opportunity. By ignoring the gendered aspects of the looming authoritarianism, the protest movement failed to reach beyond the left. Many center-right Israelis want their gay nephew to be able to rent a hotel room or their daughter to choose her clothing. Religious Zionists may support gender separation in synagogue and simultaneously believe in civic equality and equal opportunity for women. Even among Haredi women and Haredi Sephardic communities, there is more tolerance of LGBTQ relatives and increasing support for expanding women’s roles.
Had the protest connected the dots between judicial overhaul and patriarchal theocracy, more people might have joined. More people might have seen that at stake is the very nature of Israeli society as we have known it — a society with an egalitarian ethos, advanced anti-discrimination legislation and abundant female role models; a society that believes in the right of women and queer individuals to live with dignity, freedom and equality.
As a legal scholar and civil rights activist, I am tired. But I haven’t given up. I’m not optimistic, but I still have hope. Hope endures even when optimism fades. My hope is not naïve. It is defiant. It keeps me writing, marching, speaking and refusing to be erased. It is what sustains the faint but steady flame I still carry.
Two NGOs that deserve your support:
Israel’s Women’s Network: The main advocacy group on gender equality in Israel
Be Free Israel: Where Professor Tirosh is personally active, focusing on curbing religious rights from infringing on gender equality and preventing sex segregation in the public sphere. Please indicate that you are donating to the gender equality project.
