Is the Katzav rape trial good or bad for women?

As I watched the incredible courage and grace of “Aleph”, the rape accuser of former president Moshe Katzav, at her press conference, one of the questions that kept flying through my mind was, Is this whole affair good or bad for women?

Last week in Israel was a zinger for women. The appeal of Katzav’s plea bargain was alternating in the media with excerpts of the women’s stories. Meanwhile, Haim Ramon, the first convicted sex offender to be brought into the government was appointed vice premier – the same job that Ehud Olmert took shortly before then PM Ariel Sharon went into a coma, a position like that of US Vice President that seems powerless until something unexpected happens, like sudden death or a stroke. I’m torn between an intense desire to see Olmert go home for his corruption and incompetence, and a newfound terror that if he steps down, we will have a convicted sex abuser for Prime Minister. Not a good turn of events for women in this country.

As I watched the incredible courage and grace of “Aleph”, the rape accuser of former president Moshe Katzav, at her press conference, one of the questions that kept flying through my mind was, Is this whole affair good or bad for women?

Last week in Israel was a zinger for women. The appeal of Katzav’s plea bargain was alternating in the media with excerpts of the women’s stories. Meanwhile, Haim Ramon, the first convicted sex offender to be brought into the government was appointed vice premier – the same job that Ehud Olmert took shortly before then PM Ariel Sharon went into a coma, a position like that of US Vice President that seems powerless until something unexpected happens, like sudden death or a stroke. I’m torn between an intense desire to see Olmert go home for his corruption and incompetence, and a newfound terror that if he steps down, we will have a convicted sex abuser for Prime Minister. Not a good turn of events for women in this country.

Indeed, Ramon’s appointment, one of the most dejecting events I have ever experienced as a women, was accompanied by astounding news that his ex-brother-in-law hired a private detective to infiltrate the life of his victim by posing as her new best friend and convince her to say on hidden recorder that she made the whole thing up. This was front page news, though Ramon is somehow still minister. What does that say about us as a nation? Then again, Olmert likely caused needless death of dozens of soldiers in last summer’s war, and he is still Prime Minister. So I should not be surprised. But these events are depressing in their consistency of political culture in Israel.

All of these events undoubtedly caused countless women around Israel to stir. First came the news from rape crisis center that there were three times as many calls in following the Katzav affair. Then, a former parliamentary aide of Pensioner Party MK Moshe Sharoni accused him of attempted rape (so much for the sweet-old Mr. Magoo image of these old politicians).

Against all this backdrop of the appalling state of women’s power in Israeli society, Aleph got on national television and told every graphic detail of Katzav raping her. She said she did not want to come forward at first because she saw what Katzav’s victims went through when they spoke out. On the other hand, she came forward.

Watching her testimony on television, I cried. I cried for her, for her enormous pain, for the way the man ruined her life and her self-esteem as well as her career, her hopes and dreams – and I cried for the thousands and millions of women out there who have gone through the same thing over the years and generations. I cried for women today and women of previous generations who were abused, manipulated, and raped – and stayed silent. I wondered how many women wished they could go on national television and tell the world what they went through.

I couldn’t help thinking, something is shifting in Israel. Right now, right this second, as Aleph is talking. She was drawing upon her internal resource to demonstrate incredible strength, fortitude, and of course courage. To know that the president of Israel – and his wife! – were going around telling the world that she is mentally ill and has problems, knowing that a third of all viewers would assume she is lying, and that at the end of the day, she was not going to gain anything from this, she was not going to get her life back, or her job back, or her anonymity back (everyone knows who she is and her brother is a celebrity in Israel) – she did it anyway. On national television, she exposed her humiliation, he shame, and some very intimate details of her life. Her only motive, as far as we could see, was to achieve some modicum of fairness and justice. To at least set the record straight.

And even more remarkably, when she was asked if she would do things differently, she said, “Well, women’s groups are not going to like this response” – my ears perked up, what could she possibly say – “but I would say, whatever happens to you, do NOT come forward. Get help, get therapy, talk about it with people you love, but do NOT file a complaint. It’s not worth it. It doesn’t do anything.”

I highly doubt that there is a single women’s advocate out there who will find even a molecule of fault with Aleph. She fought the most amazing fight she could, and has been heavily punished. You’ve done great, Aleph. We are all really proud of you…. We are on your side all the way. No need to apologize to women. On the contrary, we should all be thanking you for your courage to speak out.

Aleph’s comment raises a troubling question. At the end of the day, with all the publicity, accompanied by governmental if not grass roots apathy towards the victims – have women come out ahead from all this? After Aleph, are women better off?

Put differently, if a sex-victim has to choose where to focus her energies, on therapy or on justice, it is clear that the balance is in favor of therapy. So the result of all this is, possibly, that women are told once again to turn inward, to solve their own problems, to work it out inside their own minds.

While I admit that I love therapy of all kinds – talk therapy, laughter therapy, art therapy, massage therapy – still, I fear that the message here to women is regressive. How many women are busy “working on themselves” to fix abusive relationships, whether relationships with bosses, kids, or spouses? How many women, rather than insisting that the men around them treat them better, go to therapy and learn how to make peace within themselves? I really hate that.

It reminds me of the advice women are given especially in Artscroll-type self-help books. Like in one particular book, where a woman writes in, “My husband hasn’t said I love you in 20 years,” the advice is, learn to appreciate his personality type and accept that he’s not an “I love you” kind of guy.. Pop psychology meets Orthodox Judaism to keep women oppressed.

This is not kitchy, this is abuse. And I would like to say, do not learn to appreciate it – run the other way.

I worry that as a result of all that has happened to Aleph, sex victims and other abuse victims will go to therapy to heal, while examining their own actions and how “we” women bring these kinds of things on ourselves. The avoidance of public justice is, I fear, a huge victory for rapists and abusers everywhere.

So at the end of the day, was this good or bad for women? A public awakening perhaps accompanied by a continued travesty of justice? I’m not sure.