International Women's Day at the Faculty

The Azrieli Faculty of Medicine has not forgotten that 19 women are still being held captive in Gaza. We await their return (and the return of all captives) home.

However, the Student Union commemorated International Women's Day by distributing flowers at the Faculty on March 7, and the Faculty as a whole celebrated the day on March 10, 2024.

The day opened with breakfast, followed by a lecture by Prof. Ruth Halperin-Kaddari (pictured to the right, next to Prof. Orly Avni), legal scholar, international activist for women's rights, full professor at the BIU Faculty of Law, founding head of the Rackman Center for the Advancement of the Status of Women and former Vice President of the UN Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW).

Since October 7, Prof. Halperin-Kaddari has been one of the main Israeli activists in the international arena on the issue of gender violence and sex crimes committed by Hamas. She gave over 75 interviews in the foreign media including CNN, France24, Sky News, BBC, Der Spiegel, Sunday Times. She is also in contact with the various UN bodies, including meeting in Geneva with the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Mr. Volker Turk, and lead the visit to Israel of Attorney Pramila Patten, the UN Secretary-General's special representative on sexual violence in conflict. Prof. Halperin-Kaddari was even invited by the US delegation to the UN to brief the Security Council on the issue of Hamas' sexual violence and was mentioned by the US ambassador to the UN, Linda Thomas Griffin, as a "critical factor for the delivery of the briefing." For her important and many years of activity for the advancement of women's rights in Israel and around the world and for her work since October 7, Prof. Halperin-Kaddari was chosen to receive this year an honorary degree from Brandeis University, as well as the human rights badge from the Ingrid Solmes Foundation in Germany.

After the lecture, the audience was invited to the performance "Singing Women שרים נשים," a tribute to the best female singers - by the band "Shablul," and then, to a fashion exchange fair, where participants were invited to bring items of clothing in excellent condition to be offered for exchange. The remaining items of clothing were donated to the evacuees.

Also on the subject of Women's Day, Dr. Rola Khamisy was invited for an interview on the occasion of International Women's Day, and asked to talk about sex and gender conscious medicine, on the Arabic Israeli channel MACAN with the senior journalist Galia Natur Kador.

You can listen to the entire interview here.