Taking Back the Night

November 25^th, 2006

International day of struggle against violence against women. The annual march, organized by the rape crisis centers, is again to be "a-political", all-inclusive, respectable.

The march leaving Rabin Square

But something happened in the march today. Maybe it is the famous serial rapist, who escaped from the police just two days earlier, in the same neighborhood. Maybe it is the president, facing charges of rape. Maybe it is the explicit violence all around us, reaching another peak. Something openned, and hundreds of women marchers were suddenly sitting across King George Street, blocking one of the busiest streets in Tel Aviv.

"We Are All A." (the initial used in the media for one of the women who filed a complaint against the President).

"Women Struggling for Social-Civil Equality and Peace"; "How Come There's Money for War but not for Welfare?"

"I am Black, You are White, Go Fuck Yourself", (reversing a recent well-publicized racist remark told to a Mizrahi woman by an owner of a cafe chain in TA)

The chants started with "No means No" and "My Body Belongs to Me" and then "Remove President Katsav, Social Justice Now", and then "Women Protest! Take to the Streets!" and suddenly the shouting gave way to a scream, a collective scream that rose from my stomach and from women around me sitting on the road, and seemed to have engulfed all of us, along with the stopped cars and the policemen and the cafes and the big mall and the city became a scream.

"War is Violence against Women" ;"Poverty is Violence against Women"

An eruption of spontaneous protest-fire, one infinite moment of NO, which ended, like all such moments, with police brutality and an arrest of the only Palestinian they could find.

S giving an interview to the Military radio station, after her release...

These days, it is highly recommended. Take an hour a day, sit in the middle of the street somewhere, and scream your head off. Walking back home through the same police looking for the same escaped rapist, I could feel again the angry blanket laid over this city. I have lost all feeling in my throat, but regained some in my heart.