Women Against Violence

Profile

Country/TerritoryIsrael
Websitehttp://www.wavo.org/?LanguageId=1
Founded1992
In their own words“Dedicated to the advancement of Palestinian women in Israel.”  They seek to “eliminate gender based violence”; advance “equal rights, and democracy among all citizens and all sexes”; and “address discrimination faced by Palestinian women living in Israel.”

Funding

Activities

  • Addresses “institutional oppression in the state, and the role the institutions of the state play in preserving the inferiority of women and intensifying patriarchal values,” and “unjust financial policy towards women in general and Arab women in particular.”
  • Engaged in “lobbying and advocacy within Knesset and in the public realm to raise awareness regarding the status of Palestinian women in Israel.”
  • Aida Touma-Sliman, co-founder of WAV and MK for the Joint Arab List, received an award from the New Israel Fund in 2008 for “her courageous work in the field of race.” The video dedication also noted her work on “new legislation and campaigns against family honor crimes, child marriage, and polygamy within her community.”

Anti-Israel Activities

  • In August 2018, WAV organized a rally in Tel Aviv to protest the Jewish Nation State Law referring to it as “racist nationality law…[and] apartheid.”
    • In August 2018, Aida Touma-Sliman went on a US tour to speak about Israeli “legislation that effectively legalizes apartheid.”
  • In May 2018, during the violence on the Gaza border, WAV signed a statement condemning the “barbaric and inhumane military actions carried out against unarmed protesting Palestinian civilians in Gaza by Israeli forces.” The statement ignored the violent nature of the protests, which have consisted of an organized armed attack on the Israeli border and IDF positions, attempts to destroy and breach the border fence, and sustained arson, rocket, and mortar attacks on Israeli civilian communities.
    • Touman-Sliman stated that “Palestinian blood is on the hands of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and US President Donald Trump…two hooligans who have set the area ablaze.”
  • In May 2018, held a vigil against “the murder of women, against the oppressive and colonialized minorities and against the occupation.”
  • In April 2018, WAV called for people to join the annual March of Return led by the Association for the Defence of the Rights of the Internally Displaced (ADRID). The march demonstrates that “the right of return is the backbone of our Palestinian cause.”
    • According to ADRID, it hosts the marches at a “time when Israel continues its criminal schemes to seize land, to wipe our villages off the map, to try to obliterate our national identity, to distort our collective memory, and to impose its false narrative.”
  • In February 2017, Aida Touma-Sliman participated in a Knesset Conference titled “Not in a democracy: 50 years of occupation,” discussing how “Israel must choose between peace with the Palestinians, and the road to apartheid or war.”
  • In June 2016, as a member of the Working Group on the Status of Palestinian Women Citizens in Israel, WAV submitted a report to the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) accusing Israeli forces of a “willingness and an eagerness to use force, including legal force,” as well as implementing “a policy of racial and national discrimination” that is “dehumanizing and offensive.”
  • In February 2016, Naila Awad, the CEO of WAV, was fired from the Help Center for Victims of Sexual Assault after alleging that “there are many studies that prove that IDF soldiers are sexually abusing and raping Palestinian women in the West Bank.”
  • During the 2014 Gaza War, WAV signed a July 22 joint written statement to the UNHRC, “condemn[ing] Israel’s unlawful targeting of civilians,” which may “constitute grave violations of international humanitarian law and international criminal law and may amount to war crimes and crimes against humanity.” The statement called on the UNHRC to “[e]stablish an independent, international commission of inquiry with the mandate to identify and investigate all violations of international human rights law and international humanitarian law committed within the context of Operation Protective Edge in the Gaza Strip.”
  • Together with other NIF grantees, in 2009 WAV wrote to the Norwegian Government Pension Fund and called “upon the Norwegian people to join us in our efforts and to stop investing in the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territory.” This letter accused a number of Israeli and international corporations of “provid[ing] specifically designed equipment for the surveillance and repression of Palestinian population through restrictions of movement and collective punishments.”
  • WAV and two other NGOs (Mada al-Carmel and the Arab Forum for Sexuality, Education and Health) were partners in the international “One Day One Struggle” campaign, titled “My Land, Space, Body and Sexuality: Palestinians in the Shadow of the Wall.” Publicity included a poster portraying an Israeli soldier reaching suggestively toward a Palestinian woman, alongside the caption: “Her husband needs a permit to touch her. The occupation penetrates her life everyday!”
  • WAV and Mada al-Carmel organized a seminar in 2009 entitled, “Anti-Racialized Feminism,” which compared Israel to Canada as a “colonialist racist settler society, which was established on antagonism to the native Aboriginal people and depriving them from property and rights.”

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