Impact
Opposing Gender Discrimination
The Israel Religious Action Center won a case representing an 81-year-old woman forced to move from her seat to accommodate a male ultra-Orthodox passenger who refused to sit next to a woman. The court ordered the airline to prohibit flight attendants from asking women to change their seats for this reason.
Ending a Ban on Women’s Voices
The Jerusalem District Court ordered the ultra-Orthodox Kol BaRama radio station to pay NIS 1 million ($280,000) in damages for barring women from speaking on the air. The ruling followed a class action suit by NIF grantee Kolech: Religious Women’s Forum. The ruling established a key precedent allowing class action lawsuits in civil rights cases.
Stopping Deportations of Asylum Seekers
After the Israeli government announced it would make people seeking refuge choose between prison or deportation, NIF-backed organizations mobilized Israelis of every stripe, including Holocaust survivors, Mizrahi leaders, and the urban poor. More than 20,000 Israelis turned out for a demonstration against the deportations. The government has since suspended its forced-deportation program.
Closing Health Disparities
A Shatil-led Arab-Jewish forum successfully pressed the Israeli government to open a radiation therapy center in a part of the Galilee that had no such facilities for cancer treatments. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Health Minister Yaakov Litzman formally opened the center in June.
Fighting for Public Housing
Years of advocacy brought the Israeli government to embark on a plan to double the current public housing stock in Israel. An additional 7,000 apartments will become available, every year, to house Israel’s poorest citizens. Single-parent households are the most likely to end up in public housing and will benefit from this program.
Protecting Women’s Rights
The army and institutions of higher education are under pressure to accommodate ultra-Orthodox recruits and students by limiting the roles available to women. A telephone hotline run by the Israel Women’s Network connects women facing discrimination with organizations advocating on their behalf. Their activism has prompted the IDF Chief Rabbi to say that military rabbis who refuse to follow policies that protect women’s service would be fired.