Israeli Group Sets Up ‘Shelters’ For Jewish Women Leaving Arab Boyfriends
Bentzi Gopstein is pushed back by a border guard in 2014. Image by Getty Images
By Naomi Zeveloff March 20, 2017
An Israeli group opposed to relationships between Jews and Arabs has set up two “shelters” to assist Jewish women in leaving their Arab male partners.
The anti-miscegination group Lehava created the facilities in apartment buildings, one in the West Bank and one in central Israel.
“In the first days after a girl leaves an Arab man, she’s extremely confused and might respond to (his) overtures and return to him,” said Anat Gopstein, who is married to Lehava head Bentzi Gopstein, according to the Ynet news site. “We’re here so that won’t happen.”
Lehava made headlines in 2014 with its protest of the marriage of an Arab Muslim and Jewish convert to Islam. At the time, Israeli President Reuven Rivlin called Lehava “rodents gnawing under the shared democratic and Jewish foundation of Israel.”
In 2015 activists with the group were convicted in an arson attack on a joint Jewish-Arab school in Jerusalem, Hand in Hand.
Contact Naomi Zeveloff at [email protected]
A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.
At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse.
Readers like you make it all possible. Support our work by becoming a Forward Member and connect with our journalism and your community.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
