Diary of a Feminist, Ohaila Shomar’s Survivor Support: A Helpline for Hope
Ohaila Shomar is a feminist activist with decades of experience, based between Jerusalem and the West Bank, she has dedicated her career to predominantly helping women in Palestine since she co-founded the SAWA organization in 1998 which supports survivors of violence.
Through years of commitment, the SAWA organization has a large database of people who have entrusted them with the most sensitive and traumatic experiences, which is why SAWA developed their work into a counseling service.
The service helps people 24/7 of all genders and ages, the current situation with the Israeli Occupation Forces’ genocide of Palestinians has correlated with a surge in demand for support. During March, SAWA gave over 6,000 counseling sessions.
Ohaila asserted that: “women do not always take things they have been through, such as abuse, seriously, and that’s because nobody listened to them, there is so much discrimination and inequality inside society.”
The gender expert noted that “discrimination is particularly prominent in conservative and religious societies, women’s rights can be more impacted by that type of patriarchal system.”
From SAWA’s inception to now
Describing her feminist career as a whole, Ohalia said it has been a “long journey and unfortunately the progress is very slow and I feel sometimes we still have a lot to do.” Especially in Palestine, she said, where conditions are unstable.
In discussing the founding of SAWA, Ohaila said: “I was thinking as a woman myself, how can we support women, how can we provide more space to other women to express themselves and talk about themselves, and use the power they have in each of us?”
She emphasized that women are held back in society by gender roles, “Women usually don’t have a lot of choices, because the gender roles are limiting each woman to a specific role.” Ohaila and her organization, believe that “all women have a lot of things to share, and do and have an active role in society.”
For this reason, Ohaila has centered her career on helping women reach their objectives and dreams.
Getting people to talk about abuse and sexual violence is not easy, especially when SAWA started over two decades ago, because like many countries, it is considered taboo in Palestine.
Ohaila and her team have been working to gradually break down this stigma. “Up until today, we cannot know exactly the percentage of women facing violence, because the people who are calling us have used all their power to seek help but there are others that did not get to this point,” she explained.
The current situation with Israel’s escalated bombardment of Palestine has been represented in the calls that SAWA receives. Ohaila said: “When stress is high we see an increase in violence.”
The expert mentioned another element key in the Palestinian context saying it is hard to talk about development with the constant challenges, “as we reach a certain point then we revert to a state of emergency and there is a regression with that.”
About the author:
Olivia Hooper is the communications co-lead at Politics4Her, she is a British journalist and editor with a degree in translation. Olivia uses her career in journalism to advocate on gender-based issues surrounding women and girls.
