A leading Israeli criminologist reported that between 30,000-50,000 Israeli wives suffer beatings by their husbands each year, almost two percent of the population. According to Dr. Menahem Amir, director of the Hebrew University’s Institute of Criminology, the high incidence of battered wives in Israel is not the result of drunken spouses, as in most other countries, but a direct function of the male chauvinist society that exists in Israel.
Addressing the annual conference on criminology here yesterday, Amir said the same phenomenon is demonstrated in cases of rape. He said that research showed that Israeli rapists tend to blame their victims. “Israeli men just aren’t used to the idea that women might not need them sexually and feel very threatend by some of the militant feminist voices in Israel.” he said. Amir wrote his doctoral thesis on rape in Israel and helped found the world’s first rape crisis center in Berkeley, Calif. in 1970.
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