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Libeskind: Maj. Gen. Uri Sagi announced he would be running for a place on the Labor Knesset list
Then a woman who claims he sexually harassed her 39 years ago popped up,
Sagi decided to drop out of the race, and yesterday he attacked the Party Chairwoman,
Shelly Yechimovich, and said she was using his story for political gain.
We will start with you, Michal Rosin, hello.
Rosin: Good morning.
Libeskind: You are the Director of the Crisis Centers for Victims of *** Assault
and as of yesterday you are #4 on the Meretz Knesset list,
this is a good time to congratulate you. Rosin: Thank you very much.
I think we all agree that if the man did what they say he did,
he does not belong in the Knesset, but how do we know he did this?
Rosin: Look, I do not know the details of this affair. I assume... I trust MK Shelly Yechimovich,
that she would not have acted as she did if she did not think
that the subject deserved the result she decided upon.
I think it shows something much more important.
I think it shows the great meaning that Israeli society and public life
attaches to offenses against women, and especially *** ones.
I think that 10-20 years ago, this subject did not exist,
and we know many politicians who did things they would not do today.
I think that since the Itzik Mordechai affair, and the conviction of ex-President Moshe Katzav,
the Ramon story,
there is understanding in the Israeli public
and among politicians specifically,
that there needs to be zero tolerance toward *** violence.
Libeskind: I think there is no argument about that,
but if you mention Moshe Katzav, let me remind you that Shelly Yechimovich
when the affair hit the news, she met with that complainant "Aleph" from the President's House
she came out after meeting her for several hours and announced
that President Moshe Katzav indeed *** her, but afterward
we saw that this woman did not even make it into the charge sheet,
no *** and no nothing, not even as a witness to a pattern,
the Attorney General did not even want to bring her to the court.
Rosin: Not because he thought that the *** did not happen.
Lineskind: He found many problems with her version's reliability.
We will not reopen the Katzav case now. The question is,
did Shelly Yechimovich's meeting, important as it may have been,
she is certainly very committed to this matter,
to erase a person?
Rosin: I do not think she erased a person. I think that she
decided that she does not want in her ranks
a man who has a shadow of *** violence on him.
I think it was politically proper for her, because she is a woman who
has been a fighter over the years regarding *** abuse,
I think that she has the right to decide that he will not run in her Knesset list,
He could have decided that despite this, he will contend,
he could have faced the subject as he is doing now.
He could have decided that he is running.
I am not aware of the details of the matter.
I was not in the room with Shelly Yechimovich when she met that woman.
I assume, based upon what I heard, like you, from the press,
she was not flippant about this.
She did it after meeting the woman and took several days to think a lot and decide.
Again I say, I do not know the details of this matter,
I want to stress again that we must be very intolerant
regarding this subject.
even if it happened 20, 30 or 40 years ago.
We can't allow people who committed a crime
will serve in the Knesset.
We want the Knesset to be clean of criminals,
certainly as regards crimes against women.
This matter is so widespread, only yesterday the papers wrote that
70% of women are very afraid, their main fear in life is from *** assault.
We see that there is a large number
as the police made public two days ago,
of *** assaults, some reported and some totally unreported,
not even to the emergency crisis centers,
women who were sexually assaulted -- 30% of the callers
were abused before they were 12. So *** abuse
is such a serious part...
...that we need to be very sharp.
I want to return to the first point and ask if you are not worried that a woman
-- without going into this case because we do not know the details and true facts --
but are you not alarmed by the ability of a woman to say something and finish off a person
without providing an ounce of proof that any of this actually happened.
Rosin: I do not think so. I think that if a man is clean,
and a woman falsely accuses him,
he will have no problem to say -- excuse me, I did no wrong, I have not sinned,
I did nothing. I am sure of this. If someone says I broke into his house last night
I will say 'I don't know what you are talking about.'
But this is not the question. Most women
do not come out and say, 'I have been harassed, I have been abused.'
Most women do not dare report it. That is the problem.
The problem is reporting. Most women do not talk about what happened.
Most of them keep this secret for dozens of years, like in this case,
because of shame, guilt, 'how did it happen to me',
'I must have caused it,' 'maybe I brought it upon myself,'
the feelings are usually the opposite.
You do not hear a story of *** harassment every day,
but the polls and facts show such high percentages.
Where are all these women? these women keep the secret insde them,
they do not talk about it. A woman's ability to come to a party leader,
and say 'he hurt me,' is so difficult,
it takes great courage and the ability
to contain the matter and say it
to utter these words, we are so educated to keep silent,
about this matter, there is a conspiracy of silence around *** abuse.
What does it mean if you were abused? Maybe it says something about you?
And the fact that she was able to come out and say it,
I think that it required great courage, and I imagine, again,
I do not know the details, that Shelly Yechimovich was impressed
by the sincerity and truth of the incident, otherwise she would not have acted as she did.
Libeskind: Yes, I will now turn to journalist Gil Ronen, Chairman of the Family Lobby,
Michal, if you want to say something after he speaks
I will be happy if you stay with us, Gil Ronen is on the line, hello.
Gil Ronen: Hello. Libeskind: How do you see this story?
Gil Ronen: I see great hypocrisy and I would say even a great stink.
Of leftism that pretends... radical leftism,
Libeskind: How is it connected to leftism?
Ronen: Look, first of all, Michal Rosin is not running for Knesset in Likud or Yisrael Beytenu.
Libeskind: Let's talk about Uri Sagi and Shelly Yechimovich.
Ronen: Shelly Yechimovich... the example is very relevant, Kalman, because if you ask her to talk about
what goes on in Hebrew University, where female students cannot walk from the dorms,
to the campus, and the ones harassing them, according to all the testimony,
are the Arabs from the village of Issawiya,
I am not sure that she will even want to go on the air.
She will tell you that it is racist, and that she does not deal with that.
So if someone comes and says, 'I represent women in Israel regarding *** harassment,'
there are entire populaces that do this in a much more extreme way
than the Jewish population, and they often do it while saying
up front, 'We are doing this as a nationalistic thing,
in order to screw the Jews,' so where are they?
Where are they? And if she is talking on behalf of the women, she is doing something slimey here,
She makes it possible to abuse women who want to study in the university.
Libeskind: You said this and we will ask Michal to answer this if she wants,
Ronen: Yes,but it is infuriating!
Libeskind: So you have been furious and let's talk about Uri Sagi now.
Ronen: OK, the story with Uri Sagi is not the story of Uri Sagi, it is the story of Shelly Yechimovich
and of a recurrent pattern. I do not care so much about Uri Sagi,
if he does not run for Knesset I am fine with that.
As you mentioned, she did something similar in the Katzav case,
she did something similar in the case of Rabbi Lau, who if you recall,
wanted to run for the presidency, I remember that I suddenly saw Yechimovich's face
on the front page of a newspaper, or all the newspapers,
and she was warning him mafia-style, Don Corleone style,
'We know stuff about you, and you had better not run.'
This is what I remember, and he indeed decided not to run.
Linbeskind: But there is a woman who came forth and told a tale.
Ronen: One second, for some reason this never happens to leftists except for
Haim Ramon, whose mistake was that he came out against Dorit Beinisch
Libeskind: Gil, what are you saying, that all of the *** harassment cases are connected to left vs. right?
Ronen: The use, the political use of the *** issue,
is completely a matter of left and right, but it is not a matter of left and right
of the kind that we are familiar with, and here we need to start -- I am referring to the sane camp,
the truly Zionist camp, we need to start thinking out of the box
and to see what has been going on around us for 50-60 years.
Within the Left there is an entire camp that is very powerful
which is properly called neo-Marxist. We will not go into the whole explanation for this here,
but the feminist movement really belongs to this camp,
the movement that we refer to as feminist. And Shelly Yechimovich and Naomi Chazan
I would say that they are at the head of the pyramid there.
So yes, definitely, the matter is a political one.
Listen, let me tell you a story.
A few years ago I sat with a woman who is acting mayor in a city in the coastal plain.
She is a Likud woman and she told me -- she is a close friend of MK Ahmed Tibi.
OK? And she is also a good friend of a certain female MK, lets call her Yosefa,
who is a prominent figure in the left, she heads one of the parties, never mind which one.
She tells me, 'listen, these two are together all the time, all the time.'
Now Michal Rosin said that we must not remain silent, even when there is a suspicion
that there is something wrong. Now, if there was something improper there,
Ahmed Tibi was Deputy Knesset Speaker, MK Yosefa was a regular MK,
maybe there was an authority relationship there, and that is improper.
I told that woman, I don't believe you that this is possible, what you say.
She tells me, 'Let me show you.' She picks up the phone,
dials, says 'Hi Ahmed, what's up? Everything OK? Good. Give me Yosefa.'
And he brings Yosefa to the phone!
Libeskind: OK, Gil... Ronen: Now why am I saying this? Because you see
this is something that can be used to finish off people, if you want to, very easily.
And it is more difficult for me because I am a man, and I do not head some organization
that pretends to help women apolitically and I do not receive money from the New Israel Fund,
it is more difficult for me -- but just let me finish -- but once you, as the Left,
which does not identify itself as Left but is in fact a very radical neo-Marxist Left,
once you take over this market sector so to speak, this subject of
sex and relations of authority, and you are able to use this
as a tool to eliminate any politician you want to,
beyond all the other damage that they cause with this,
to the very relations between men and women, then you can change the rules of the political game.
Libeskind: Gil Ronen, I will thank you. Michal, are you still with us?
Michal Rosin are you with us?
Rosin: Yes, of course. Libeskind: So I will ask you, from all... we had some riddles that I myself did not understand
Just answer what he said about Arabs and Jews, that you avoid matters that are uncomfortable politically.
Rosin: I will answer, of course, there was a whole lot of hogwash here,
that are not worthy of a response. I will say one specific thing:
We are an a-political organization, we have an organization that helps the religious-Zionist sector
and the hareidi sector, we have worked with all populaces in the Knesset,
and we are obviously not a leftist organization,
I am proud to be the student of Naomi Chazan and Zehava Galon the feminists,
but the organization is an apolitical one,
and I am proud to work in recent years with MKs like Tzipi Hotovely,
of course Limor Livnat, Orly Levy of the Right,
who have advanced a lot of legislation in the past few years,
on the subject of *** abuse, so that this is most certainly a bunch of hokum.
Michal Rosin, Gil Ronen, thank you very much. Rosin: Thank you. Libeskind: Good bye.