WUNRN
Via IANSA Women's Network
On 6 December, 2011, the Knesset Committee on the Status of Women
convened a special meeting with several Knesset members, police and government
officials, for the occasion of International Human Rights Day. The meeting,
initiated by the Gun Free Kitchen Tables campaign, was dedicated exclusively to
the campaign demand: Enforcing an existing law restricting security guards’
guns to their places of work and prohibiting guns from being taken home by
security guards at the end of their work shifts.
The campaign, joined to date by 10 other civil society and women’s
groups, followed up on a year old request that the Committee address the threat
posed to thousands of women by off duty security guards being allowed to keep
their guns, and end the continuing failure of the executive branch to enforce
this life saving law.
The Chair of the Committee on the Status of Women, Member of the Knesset
(MK) Tzipi Hotoveli, opened, stating the gravity of the statistics collected by
project activists. MK Zehava Gal-On continued with a proposal to handle
security guard companies very firmly, suggesting a freeze on licensing new arms
to all security guard firms. She said, "They are no man’s land, existing
beyond and outside of law'.
Addressing the Committee, campaign activist and IANSA woman Rela Mazali
stressed the lack of police data on murder weapons and their origin, and
requested that the Committee instruct the police to revise their database to
include, and make accessible, details on murders according to the type of
weapon, its origin and ownership. Rela then explained why the issue of
the possession and storage of guns in the home by off duty security guards is
pertinent to, and dangerous for, women in particular.
She cited the impracticality of safe storage in the home for such guns,
and challenged the implicit assumption that the burden of taking weapons to
central storage sites would be borne by the already underpaid guards. She
pointed out that the solution should be financed by those making the profits,
namely the heads of security guard firms and the major employer of these firms,
the government.
Campaign activist Alamnesh Zalaka shared testimony on her personal
experience, after being shot and hit by 8 bullets at close range by her
security guard husband. She gave an outline of how she filed a complaint with
the police due to her partner’s violence about a year before the shooting,
after which he was denied a license to possess guns. However, the gun was later
returned to him without her knowledge.
Attorney Smadar Ben Natan explained the existing law and pointed out a
direct contradiction between its substance and the detailed instructions issued
by the Ministry of Public Security, which allow security companies to allow
security guards to take their guns home after their work shifts have ended.
The Committee Chair concluded with the resolution that the committee
would instruct the Minister of Public Security to ensure enforcement of the
law, within a two month period. The Committee will convene a follow-up meeting
to monitor implementation.
Gun Free Kitchen Tables has achieved the ambitious aim to generate
public discussion on the implications of small arms proliferation, an issue
which is not often talked about in Jewish Israeli society.
Dozens of signs with the campaign poster with the message “Guards’ Guns
Unsafe at Home” were carried by activists in the 25 November march and 500
copies were displayed on billboards throughout Tel Aviv. Thousands of people
have been following the campaign on facebook, blogs and youtube, where a
one-minute campaign video highlights the murders of women with security guards'
guns.
The campaign and its demand are now a known entity in mainstream media
in
Sadly, the murder of Aviva Makesh Jambar with a gun held by an off duty
security guard on 11 December, joined the chronology of women’s
preventable killings. "While we still haven’t succeeded in preventing
these murders, we can safely say that the campaign has succeeded in placing the
issues we’re raising onto the public and government agenda and introducing them
into public discourse," says Rela Mazali.
The same day, the campaigners met with the Public Security Ministry
Chief of Staff and Legal Advisor, who informed them that the Ministry was in
the process of formulating amendments to the existing law, ensuring that they
would have practical means for enforcing it (including financial sanctions for
offending companies and options for shutting them down).
High level officials claimed that one reason for the slow process is
because of their demand for these amendments which requires discussion and
revision of existing laws. They said there would be considerable opposition in
the Knesset to this legislation and asked the campaigners to press for its
enactment, both through the public sphere and directly among Members of
Knesset. "Although this is going to be difficult, we’re poised to
intervene at a point where it actually has a real potential for achieving
change,"' says Rela Mazali.