A special event in Brazil to mark the International Day for the Prevention of Violence Against Women:
Lili Ben Ami, the sister of the late Michal Sela, who was murdered in 2019 by her partner Eliran Malol, spoke on Friday before the Brazilian Congress, at a special meeting organized by the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
"The language of violence against women in the pavilion is an international language," said Ben Ami to the friends and members of Congress who came especially to the Senate plenary hall.
"The murdered are usually the strongest women who insist on saying goodbye to their obsessive partner and go free. I call on you to join us and join hands so that together we can develop a social vaccine to prevent domestic violence and the murder of women."
Ben Ami, who received applause, added: "I have a dream in which years from now I am sitting on the beach with a young woman - this is my grown-up niece, Michal's daughter. I caress her curls and tell her that there used to be a phenomenon of murdering women in their pavilion, a phenomenon the light of terror, but we rekindled it and won, and the phenomenon disappeared."
Ben Ami speaks before the Brazilian House of Representatives, photo: Forum Michal Sela
Violence against women in general, and the murder of women by their partners in particular, are a particularly painful issue in Brazilian society.
In Brazil, a huge country with about 220 million inhabitants, every day about three women are murdered by their partners.
In total, every year about 1,350 women are murdered in the country - a proportion that is relatively more than three times greater than the proportion of women who are murdered by their partners in Israel, which is about 20 per year.
On top of that, a huge number of about 50,000 rape cases occur in Brazil every year, and in fact, every 10 minutes on average, a rape occurs in the giant country.
Veterans of the Sting Unit demonstrate protection of a threatened woman as part of the "Michel Sela Dogs" project // Photo: Michal Sela Forum
Ben Ami, founder of the Michal Sela Forum, met in Brazil with a series of political leaders, professionals and law enforcement officials, and presented them with some of the forum's solutions to the problem of gender violence.
For Brazilian women
One of the solutions presented to the local police is the "Michel Sela Dogs" project, under which, in cooperation with the Ministry of Internal Security and veterans of the "Sting" unit, protection dogs are awarded to women threatened by their ex-partners.
The project aroused significant interest and now the Brazilians are considering replicating it.
Another project that was presented, which is managed in Israel in cooperation with Shin Bet veterans, deals with protecting the homes of threatened women instead of evacuating them to a shelter.
In addition, Ben Ami presented to the political echelon in Brazil the law unique to Israel that was enacted following the murder of her sister Michal, and which denies guardianship of the shared children from men who murdered their spouses.
The law arouses a lot of interest in Brazil, and it is possible that it will soon be introduced in the local parliament.
Ben Ami meets Brazilian public figures during her visit to the country, photo: Tamir Moorg
Ben Ami during her trip to Brazil,
The extraordinary gathering in the Senate plenary testifies to Israel's special status in Brazil.
Elections were recently held in the country in which the right-wing and pro-Israeli president Jair Bolsonaro narrowly lost to his opponent from the Socialist Party, Lula da Silva, who is considered to have pro-Palestinian positions.
However, the Israeli Embassy in Brasilia, headed by Ambassador Daniel Zonshine, maintains close ties with Lula's party as well.
One of the leading candidates for the position of Brazil's next foreign minister is the Jew Jacques Wagner, who holds positions sympathetic to Israel, and in Jerusalem they hope that despite the change of power the warm relations between the countries will not be damaged.
After the visit to Brasilia, Ben Ami went to Rio de Janeiro, a city suffering from a serious problem of crime and violence, which also flows into the field of gender violence.
In Rio, she met with community officials with the aim of helping them to adopt, replicate and implement some of the projects of the "Michel Sela Forum", and to lower the rate of murders, rapes and other violent attacks on women in the city.
In both Rio and Brasilia, she visited shelters for battered women, and shared Michal's tragic story and the insights gained from it with the professionals and the women who live in the shelters.
In this framework, much emphasis was placed on the issue of "warning flags", and Ben Ami explained and guided how to identify suspicious signs of a violent partner, and thus save the women in time.
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