An Israeli proverb: Beat your wife every now and then... for if you don't know why you have to slug her, she does!
Friday, August 23, 2002 Elul 15, 5762
Knesset outraged by lenient sentences for wife-beaters
By Gideon Alon
A special, mid-recess session of the Knesset yesterday heard that some 60 percent of the state's appeals against sentences handed down by the courts are over lenient sentences given to men convicted of physically harming their wives, and that the prisons already are holding some 1,300 men convicted of violence at home.
The session, called in the wake of 10 spousal murders since the start of the year, heard a consensus from across the political spectrum decrying lenient sentencing by judges - sometimes in contravention of laws already promulgated by the Knesset. It also heard that promises - made by the current and previous governments - of a NIS 50 million annual grant to shelters for battered women, has been reduced to NIS 12.5 million, with a third of that being siphoned off for other purposes.
According to Minister Danny Naveh of the Likud, some 60 percent of the state's appeals to higher courts against lenient sentences are for cases involving wife-beating. Public Security Minister Uzi Landau said that the prisons now hold some 1,300 men convicted of family violence. He said the police have 170 investigators with special training in family violence cases, and that every police station in the country has at least one such trained officer.
Naveh proposed that men who are issued with restraining orders banning them from their spouse's residences be required to pay for the installation of emergency buzzers in the residence, and that those who refuse be held by the police. "We have to fight these terrorists who threaten their wives, the way we fight terror," said Naveh.
MK Zahava Gal-On of Meretz complained that "the judges make a joke out of the legislature's intentions," noting that she has pressed for a law that would require minimum sentences in cases of family violence, but the courts remain lenient. The Supreme Court, she told the MKs in the plenum, has ruled that wife beaters should not be allowed out of jail on bail while they await trial, "but the courts are not obeying that ruling."
Gal-On objected to a proposal by State Attorney Edna Arbel, that the state establish a mechanism for assessing the risk of more violence by anyone arrested for family violence, saying that there's no need for more spending when the problem is known.
MK Yael Dayan was furious over the government cuts in spending that had been intended to fight the phenomenon of family violence. She said that the original promise of NIS 50 million was first cut in half to NIS 25 million, then cut in half again to NIS 12.5 million. "And then the Labor and Social Affairs Ministry took a third of that for other matters," she charged.
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