During an appeal to end violence against women, Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu somehow wound up rambling about animal rights and comparing the two; suggesting that “women are animals… with rights.”
He veered off script after he seemed to imply that pets could be hit by their owners, and scrambled to undo the damage: “Women don’t belong to you, women are not an animal you can hit,” he said, quickly adding, “And today we say you don’t hit animals either.”
After an excruciating pause in which the Prime Minister seemed to search for what to say next, he made the bold (and infinitely unwise) choice to dig in.
“We understand (animals) have insight and there is intelligence and there is cognition and animals have feelings,” he said.
“We are rightfully compassionate toward animals, we really connect to this,” he said, gesturing painfully toward his wife, Sara.
“So, if we are compassionate toward animals — women are animals. Children are animals. Animals with rights, and this matter needs to pass from the world and I hope we don’t see these shocking things,” he finally concluded.
The Prime Minister’s Office later released a statement in response to the leader’s words, saying they had been taken out of context.
“Prime Minister Netanyahu, who spoke from the bottom of his heart today about women’s rights and against any violation of them, only gave an example of abuse in a small part of his speech when he also spoke about harm to animals, but in no way intended to compare them,” it read.
If this was Netanyahu speaking from the bottom of his heart, however, perhaps that’s the problem.
There have been 19 domestically violent murders in Israel this year, up from 13 in 2019, according to the Ynet news site.
The epidemic of violence against women in Israel has propelled recent protests for reform.