When the Nation Is Under Threat, Many Women Are Too

International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women

Every year, on November 25th, the world marks the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women. In Israel, this year’s commemoration comes during a moment of national exhaustion, a period where the country is still reeling from profound loss, collective trauma, and the long, uneven path to recovery after October 7. And yet, amid all the visible crises we face, there is another crisis unfolding quietly inside thousands of homes. One we often struggle to see, especially in wartime.

Violence against women does not pause during national emergencies. If anything, the risk often grows. Research around the world shows that during war, displacement, or mass trauma, the conditions that already endanger women intensify: chronic stress, financial strain, isolation, hypervigilance, substance use, and untreated PTSD. None of these factors “cause” violence. Most men living with trauma are not violent. But at a population level, when instability collides with the collapse of support systems, the danger inside the home increases. Trauma raises the emotional temperature in households already under strain; it stretches coping mechanisms thin. And too often, women and children are the ones absorbing that volatility.

Here in Israel, hotline data tells a deeply misleading story. During the COVID-19 lockdowns, domestic-violence calls to crisis centers dropped. During the twelve-day war with Iran, they dropped again. Even since October 7, some services have reported decreased call volume. But every professional in this field will tell you that low reporting during crisis does not reflect lower violence. It reflects lower ability to reach help.

A woman cannot safely call a hotline if she is trapped in the same room as the person harming her. She cannot walk to a neighbor if air-raid sirens keep her at home. She will not go to the police if she believes “they have bigger things to deal with right now.” She may internalize the message that during wartime, she must handle this alone—that her own safety is secondary to the nation’s crisis.

When a whole country is in survival mode, the women experiencing violence at home often disappear into the background of our collective attention. This is the gap we must confront: the distance between the real level of danger and the limited data that reaches our systems.

Globally, the numbers are staggering. One in three women will experience physical or sexual violence in her lifetime. In humanitarian crises, that risk rises sharply. And in Israel, rapid assessments during the war have shown increased risk factors for intimate-partner violence such as, stress, unemployment, social isolation, even as reporting declines.

For policymakers, funders, community leaders, and anyone involved in crisis response, this is the moment where vigilance must increase, not fade. Because paradoxically, when national threats subside—when we enter the “after”—the risks inside the home often escalate. Just as we know that PTSD and suicide rates rise after conflicts end, we also know that domestic violence often surges when the world around a family becomes quieter and private tensions resurface.

As a society, we cannot allow women’s safety to be treated as a secondary issue—something we address only once the “real” crisis has passed. For many women, the war’s front line is inside their home. Their safety, their dignity, their lives are national issues.

Today, as we mark the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women, our call to action is clear: 

We must build systems that do not disappear during emergencies. 

We must invest in proactive outreach, not reactive hotlines. 

We must integrate gender-based violence into every crisis plan. 

And we must remember that resilience begins with safety.

Collective healing requires that we look not only at the public wounds but also at the private ones. The trauma of this past year sits inside all of us, but for many women, it sits in the most dangerous place of all: behind closed doors.

We owe them attention. We owe them protection. We owe them systems that do not go silent when they most need to be heard.