Resling Publishing, 2023, 521 pages. 2025, 528 pages.

MUTENESS AND VIOLENCE IN THE ISRAELI FAMILY V. 1 AND V. 2 [HEBREW]

The book is a follow-up to Naomi Gale’s (Gal) Violence Against Women (2003), expanding the scope from individual acts of violence to broader patterns of domestic violence in Israeli society, often culminating in femicide, underscoring the urgency of the issue. It emphasizes that domestic violence disproportionately affects vulnerable populations—primarily women and children—and is prevalent across all sectors of Israeli society.

A significant focus is placed on social awareness and activism. Public protests, such as the 2018 demonstration of over 30,000 people, signal a growing societal rejection and the persistent failure and the laxity of generations of Israeli governments in dealing with violence, victims, and perpetrators of violence.

In recent decades, Israel has absorbed over a million immigrants, and therefore the current study emphasizes immigration processes and their impact on domestic violence. As the book shows, one of the reasons for the worsening situation of violence in immigrant families is the integrative adaptation of women compared to the cultural-social shock and withdrawal experienced by men. This phenomenon becomes especially serious in the transition from a traditional-patriarchal society to a modern one. Alongside this, the author examines in depth the issue of violence and the murder of women in Arab society.

Muteness and Violence in the Israeli Family: State Authorities, Treatment and Rehabilitation 2025 (Vol.2) completes the research of the first Volume Muteness and Violence in the Israeli Family (2023). It is impossible to separate the current situation in Israeli society without emphasizing the attitude towards the status of women and the Gordian knot between religion-politics-military-economy, as the state and its authorities push the issue to the backyard of the Israeli Society and thus allocate minimal budgets to address the phenomenon.

Naomi Gale is a lecturer at Ashkelon Academic College