Police arrested three family members of a 17-year-old woman who was found dead with signs of violence on her body in a Ramle apartment on Tuesday, June 13. Magen David Adom (MDA) paramedics responded to a report of a seriously injured woman in the central Israeli town at 11:50 am and found the victim, Henriette Kara, with signs of violence on her upper body. “When we arrived we entered the home where we saw a young woman of about 20 who was unconscious, with no pulse or breathing, and with signs of violence on her upper body,” MDA paramedic Yousef Ismail said. “We performed medical examinations but she displayed no signs of life and we established her death at the scene.” According to reports, the killing came a day after the victim graduated from high school.
Advertisement for this coming Saturday night’s protest demonstrations against femicide in Tel Aviv, Jerusalem and Haifa
Following the incident, Joint List MK Aida Touma-Sliman (Hadash), who chairs the Knesset Committee on the Status of Women and Gender Equality, said “apparently women’s lives are forsaken in this country” and called for the adoption of an action plan that was formulated six months ago to combat violence against women. MK Touma-Sliman added that the murder was another sign of the “systemic failure of law enforcement and welfare authorities to deal with such cases of murder.”
Calling for a national program to combat violence against women, Joint List MK Dov Khenin, (Hadash) said: “A woman was found dead in Ramle, with stab wounds on her body. This is the second woman murdered today, and the 13th woman to have lost her life since the beginning of 2017.”
These killings are the latest in a string of murders of women that have taken place in the past few months, including the suspected murder of Maya Goren, 41, in Bat Yam on Saturday night, June 10. Goren’s husband was arrested and admitted to police that he had killed his wife.
Also on Tuesday, the body of another woman, about 60 years of age, was discovered in a guest room at the Renaissance Hotel on the Tel Aviv seafront. An unconscious man estimated to be approximately 70 years old was also found in the hotel room and was taken to the city’s Ichilov Hospital. In late April and early May three women were murdered in one week in separate incidents, sparking outrage from women’s-rights activists, especially those in the Arab community, against the lack of police efforts to stop such crimes.
On Saturday evening, June 17, three demonstrations against the murder of women and the inaction of the authorities to effectively combat this phenomenon will be held:
- in Tel Aviv from 8:00 pm in the square outside of the Habima Theater
- In Jerusalem from 8:30 pm at Paris Square nearby the official residence of the prime minister
- In Haifa from 8:00 pm at 1 Kiryat Sefer Street
The Communist Party of Israel has called upon members, supporters and the public in general to participate in these protests.
