An emergency meeting of women’s organizations, including Dr Galit Shaul from The Rackman Center, was held ahead of MK Ayelet Shaked’s planned bill to base child support on both parents’ income and their involvement in the child’s care. Under the bill, Israel would no longer base child support on Jewish law, under which only the man pays.
While we are not against equality, this new bill only sets out to cause damage for families without taking the child’s best interests into consideration. Offering men child support will cause many men to opt for joint custody or more even if this is not what will happen in reality but they will do it in order to get money. In addition women still suffer terribly in the whole divorce process, due to the fact that divorce in Israel goes according to the Jewish law – that a man has to willingly give the Gett. It is interesting that where men will benefit from changing from Halacha to civil law, the religious parties are not opposing this change but in the meantime women are still suffering under Jewish laws in divorce!
The bill vote was postponed for two more weeks which we hope gives us more time to spread awareness of the issues behind this new bill to prevent it going ahead.
More details in Hebrew here: http://www.davar1.co.il/47280/ and
