Due to the corona, ties developed between Muslims and Jewish women, which are carried out mainly by telephone. • If they did not behave properly, they received screams, curses and humiliations.
The diplomatic operation to free the young woman who crossed the border into Syria last week raised the issue of ties between Jewish and minority women, in Israel and in other countries.
Admittedly, the phenomenon of a young woman crossing the border into an enemy state is extremely unusual, but at the same time, Yad Laachim reports that they are facing a new problem, which expanded during the Corona crisis - violent and obsessive telephone connections between minorities and Jewish women.
Hadas (pseudonym), 22, from the center of the country, met a number of young Arab women who worked in a food store near her home about a year ago.
Later, one of them asked to meet her cousin from the Triangle area, who came to the store several times and met the young Jewish woman.
The two tightened the relationship and when the closure periods began they kept in touch using the mobile phones.
Subsequently the amount of calls and messages increased significantly and was very intense.
Hadas says she was required to update the young Arab almost at any given moment on her actions and to respond to any message or call from him immediately.
They both, she says, slept at night when the cell phone lines were open and several times during the night when he called her name, she was forced to answer him.
If she did not do so, she suffered various screams, curses and humiliations from him.
When Hadas' mother noticed the damage this relationship was causing her, she turned to the Yad Laachim organization, which sent a social worker to keep in touch with her daughter.
In conversations between them, Hadas admitted that she understands that she lives in a non-normative reality but noted that she does not feel able to sever the connection into which she has entered.
In 2019, the association's hotline received 27 inquiries, which accounted for 8% of all inquiries, regarding violent telephone and virtual connections.
In 2020, and especially during the Corona period, the number jumped by 50% to 41 inquiries, which is about 14% of all inquiries.
The association emphasizes that the patterns of action and violence are very similar in almost all cases and that for the most part the relationships begin in a good and pleasant way but then an obsession that slowly leads to verbal and mental violence begins to build.
This violence includes a demand for complete availability on the part of the young women, duties to report on daily dress and conduct, insults and humiliations if they do not comply with the instructions, and even demands of a sexual nature such as sending revealing pictures and other demands.
It should be noted that some of the young women rarely met their spouses face to face as well, which further undermined their confidence and caused them to fulfill any demand even if made remotely, for fear that verbal violence would soon slide into various sanctions.
In some cases, members of the minorities threatened the young women that if they severed ties with them, they would spread their intimate photos on social media and even physically harm them.
One of the young women who felt threatened wrote to the guy she was in contact with that if he approached her home she would call the police.
"In one case," a representative of the association told Israel Today, "one of the young women spoke to me and told me that she would soon be forced to disconnect. When I asked her why, she replied that she was currently talking to me during a lecture at the university where she was studying. She must be available to the young person she is in contact with. "
It turns out that the young woman's telephone partner did not allow her to talk to other students during breaks, and in order to prevent this, he kept her busy throughout the conversation until a new lesson began.
The same young woman had to give up the lecture so that she could talk to a Yad Laachim representative without arousing her partner's suspicion.
In another case, Avital (pseudonym), a 27-year-old girl from Haifa, met a guy named Amir in a digital course to which she was enrolled.
Amir offered her to study together by phone and slowly the relationship grew stronger and became a couple.
In time, Avital testified to the association's members, Amir began to develop an obsession with her and when she tried to sever the connection, he began shouting at her and cursing at her, including in Arabic, so she discovered that he was an Arab guy.
Although she tried to evade him, the messages from him became more and more violent and out of fear she started wanting him on a remote control, wearing only what he allowed her, being available on the cell phone constantly and not leaving the house without getting permission from him.
"In the past year, and following the Corona epidemic, we have seen an increase in the number of referrals and cases of telephone and social networking with minorities, including mental, financial and sometimes physical abuse," said Rabbi Shmuel Lifshitz, one of the organization's leaders. And one. "
