This week at Tel Aviv University, over a thousand women and men gathered for NA’AMAT’s national conference marking the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women.
This year’s theme, “Everything is Under Control”, focused on one of the fastest-growing and least understood forms of abuse: technology-facilitated violence.
• Hagit Pe’er, President of NA’AMAT Israel and NA’AMAT International, opened with a call to confront the ways technology can both protect and endanger women.
• Survivors shared stories of how control can begin through screens, passwords, and tracking apps, and how knowledge, innovation, and community can reclaim safety. [Watch this year’s campaign video below to learn more about this form of abuse.]
• A panel of experts, including attorneys and technologists, explored new legal and AI-based tools to fight back.
• The entrance exhibits featured Israeli start-ups creating safety tech and an art installation by a woman who once lived in NA’AMAT’s women’s shelter.
Technology can isolate but it can also empower.
Across Israel, women and allies are using innovation to turn control into protection.
One of them is Wonder Jewel, a company founded by Israeli women whose jewelry doubles as a discreet safety device. Their newest line, Hilly’s Wonder, is named for Hilly Reich, a young woman murdered at the Nova music festival on October 7.
Every piece carries a message: we will not let violence define women’s lives or their deaths. Visit their website.
“S” – Artist and Survivor
During her one-year stay, with her six-year-old son, social workers discovered her talent and its power in helping her heal. I could not take her photograph, for her safety, but I will never forget the look on her face as she saw her art on display for the first time. I am so grateful to have represented the generations of NA’AMAT USA women whose dedication gave her the safety and the tools to build a new life for her and her son.
“Art gave me a way to release the darkness I lived in and the pain I carried through years of silence and hiding.
Through drawing, I could erase, rebuild, and begin again.
My drawings stayed with me through sleepless nights, when I couldn’t calm down.
They became the place where I could finally express myself without words.”
— S. arrived at a NA’AMAT shelter with her young son after years of abuse. Nearly a year later, she left to start a new life that is safer, stronger, and free.
He always knows or wants to know — where you are, who you’re with, what you’re wearing, even your bank passwords. He spreads your private information without your consent. In the end, you lose your independence, you no longer feel free. Violence through technology is another way of exerting control: less visible, but no less dangerous.
It starts small — a question, a check-in, a “concern.” But when every call, message, and purchase is tracked, it’s not love. It’s control. Violence takes many forms. And women deserve to be free from all of them.
In Israel today, NA’AMAT is leading the fight against a new form of abuse: control through technology.
This powerful campaign shows how “love” can disguise surveillance: constant messages, location tracking, financial control, digital monitoring. The result is isolation and fear —invisible chains that tighten until a woman can no longer breathe.
NA’AMAT’s shelters and counseling centers now help women facing this kind of digital violence and we’re working to make sure every woman recognizes the signs before it’s too late.
Control is not love. Violence starts here.
Our shelters, counseling centers, and advocacy networks are already responding to this new frontier of violence.
In November, NA’AMAT Israel will launch a digital mini-site with four TED-style talks from the conference, continuing the national campaign to help women recognize and respond to technological abuse.
NA’AMAT’s helpline remains open for anyone facing control, monitoring, or manipulation through technology. Because when you lose control of your information, you lose control of your life and no woman should face that alone. This is the women’s movement that built a nation – still building, still protecting, still repairing the world, one life at a time.
Our shelters, counseling centers, and advocacy networks are already responding to this new frontier of violence.
In November, NA’AMAT Israel will launch a digital mini-site with four TED-style talks from the conference, continuing the national campaign to help women recognize and respond to technological abuse.
NA’AMAT’s helpline remains open for anyone facing control, monitoring, or manipulation through technology. Because when you lose control of your information, you lose control of your life and no woman should face that alone. This is the women’s movement that built a nation – still building, still protecting, still repairing the world, one life at a time.
