Ortal Ben Dayan (; born July 12, 1981) is an Israeli media personality, sociologist, Mizrahi feminist activist, blogger, and fashion and jewelry designer.
Early life and education Ben Dayan was born in Kiryat Shmona on July 12, 1981, to a family of Moroccan extraction. Her parents divorced when she was 12 years old, and she moved in with her grandmother when she was 15. After being expelled from Danzinger High School in Kiryat Shmona, she began attending the nearby kibbutz high school in Kfar Blum. The experience of being a Mizrahi "townie" in this more privileged Ashkenazi setting was of seminal importance to her later career and activism. During her compulsory military service, Ben Dayan was a soldier-teacher, beginning her social activism by working with youth groups from the geographic periphery of Israel.
In 2006, Ben Dayan completed her BA in international relations and sociology, and in 2010 she completed her MA in sociology and anthropology, both summa cum laude. She caught the public eye when she sued the Hebrew University of Jerusalem for sexual harassment, a pivotal case that changed how universities in Israel manage relationships between faculty and students, as well as the handling of complaints regarding sexual misconduct by faculty.
Activism Mizrahi feminism and social justice work Ben Dayan describes her activism as intersectional. She is active in many areas involving social justice, feminism and gender, racism and Mizrahi social status, as well as issues of class and the social and geographic periphery, including the "fast-tracking" of Mizrahi youth to trade schools and blue collar professions. She traces her Mizrahi and gender awareness back to the racism she experienced in high school, which she describes as acutely gendered, for example, when she was called a "freha" (a derogatory term for Mizrahi women) by her schoolmates in the kibbutz school. While studying at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Ben Dayan was involved with the "Landa program" for social involvement, and was a community coordinator for the "Alon" NGO in the Gilo settlement, a Jewish neighborhood in East Jerusalem, responsible for reducing gaps in education.
Afterwards, she became active in the Mizrahi Democratic Rainbow Coalition, where she was a member of the executive committee and spokeswoman during 2009–2010. In 2010 she was also the academic coordinator for Naamat, where she conducted seminars on women in the workforce. Also in 2010, she began working for the Mizrahi feminist organization Achoti – for Women in Israel, where she ran an anti-racism project and conducted a writing program called "Women Create a Language of Peace", in which women from various marginalized groups participated, including Mizrahi women, Palestinian women, women from the former Soviet Union, and others. The project culminated in the publication of a book compiling the women's writings.
In 2012–2013, Ben Dayan wrote reports for the Coalition for Equal Allocation of Resources for Mizrahi Culture, on behalf of the coalition "Libi BaMizrah" (My Heart is in the East). Among these was a multi-year analysis of state cultural budgets provided to various groups.
Ben Dayan has been outspoken on multiple issues in the Israeli public eye – often receiving scathing responses from both right and left. These include anti-homophobia campaigns that replace anti-gay stereotypes with anti-woman and anti-Mizrahi ones; she published a photo of herself holding a book on Israeli art, but only those pages dealing with Mizrahi artists (over 50% of the Jewish population of Israel) – which was 6 out of 200 – creating a dramatic effect of the thin group of pages held, while the heavy bulk of the book is pulled down by gravity; she has been outspoken about the campaign to exonerate Roman Zadorov of the murder of Tair Rada, calling out the gendered and ethnic aspects of trying to accuse her 13-year-old friends of the murder to set him free; and she drew especially sharp criticism from "her own camp" when she published an article stating that African refugees would not be sent to their deaths if the government deportation plan would be implemented.
Feminist activism in South Tel Aviv After Ben Dayan opened a vintage fashion store in the Tel Aviv neighborhood of Neve Sha'anan in 2013, she was exposed to the issue of the personal security of women in the area. She began to work on their behalf, including raising money for pepper spray, and the establishment of a permanent distribution station in her shop. She also organized the "Women in Yellow" patrol, which took its name from the Indian organization Gulabi Gang, or "Women in Pink", who patrol their areas with sticks and confront abusive and violent men. During 2014–2015, Women in Yellow conducted nightly patrols in the streets of South Tel Aviv to establish a presence and prevent cases of violence, to assist women experiencing violence, and to draw official attention to the harsh conditions in the region that contribute to increased violence, including lack of lighting and a lack of police presence and responsiveness. This work put Ben Dayan on the list of "50 Women for Women" compiled by the online magazine Saloona.
Online activism Since 2008, Ben Dayan has published blogs and articles in online newspapers, including Eretz HaEmori, Saloona, Ha'Oketz, and more. She uses Facebook to disseminate social and political ideas to a wide audience. Ben Dayan is considered to be a social media influencer. In 2012 she published a Facebook status asking: "A survey for Shabbat: What is Ashkenazi in your eyes?", with the purpose of underscoring the usually transparent behavior and cultural markers of the hegemonic social group. The status drew over 21,000 responses and caused a furor in the printed press, on television and on the radio. The thread continues to be active as of February 2019, seven years since its publication. Since then, Ben Dayan has been using the Facebook platform to discuss Mizrahi and feminist issues, especially in the face of what she calls "the Ashkenazi Left", and to discuss issues that face the pre-gentrification residents of southern Tel Aviv – most of whom are of Mizrahi origin, and other issues relating to Mizrahim in Israeli society, from the allocation of resources and educational and professional channeling, to raising issues such as the use of the words 'ars' and 'freha' (derogatory words used for Mizrahi men and women respectively, but generally denied to have racist overtones) as racist phenomena.
In 2011, she co-authored with activist Assaf Kintzer the blog "Hatzatetet" (the "Quotery") an archival site of racist and sexist quotes by Israeli leaders of the founding generation and famous Zionist thinkers. In the years 2012–2013, she also ran the personal political blog "An Axe to Grind", in which she wrote extensively on some of the explosive issues that took place on Facebook, including the storm surrounding the claim that the work of post-Soviet artist Zoya Cherkassky's portrayal of Mizrahim is racist, as well as criticism of leading left wing Ashkenazi journalists and activists, such as Yossi Gurevitch, Amir Shibi, and Dror Feuer.
Protests and arrests On August 12, 2013, Ben Dayan was arrested after she refused to identify herself to a police officer. She was sitting at the Albi café in Neve Sha'anan in Tel Aviv when a Border Police car arrived at the scene, and the policemen demanded that members of a Palestinian family sitting outside the café approach the car and identify themselves. Ben Dayan went up to one of the officers and told him that she knows the family, when the other policeman shouted at her "you asshole leftist". Ben Dayan demanded that he identify himself (his name badge was hidden). In response, the policeman got out of the car and demanded that Ben Dayan present her identification papers, and after she refused, the police arrested her. She was cuffed by both wrists and ankles, and spent the night in Neve Tirtza Women's Prison. The next day, Judge Shamai Becker of the Magistrate's Court determined that she should rightly be released, but ruled that "purely for the sake of politeness" Ben Dayan should identify herself. She refused to do so, and appealed the decision in the District Court. Following a personal request from the appellate judge, she agreed to provide her identification details and was released to her home.
Following her release, Ben Dayan shared a status posted on Facebook by the arresting officer, Melvin Ben Sheshet, which included blatant racist comments about Arabs. The border police, who previously claimed that Ben Dayan was the one who cursed the policemen, and denied that their officers called her an "asshole" or attacked her ostensible political camp, decided to immediately terminate Ben Sheshet's service, and stated that "the corps views with severity such behavior that is blatantly contrary to the values that every police officer is required to adhere to, and which certainly has no place in the Israel Police."
Towards the end of 2014, Ben Dayan arrived at Zion Square in Jerusalem to meet with activists from the group "Jerusalem without Racism" at a demonstration by Lehava, a religious far-right organization targeting non-Jewish presence in Israel, and assimilation of Jews into non-Jewish communities (in particular, through intermarriage). A young man at the protest began yelling at Ben Dayan "Neo-Nazi" and sharmuta (whore or slut). Ben Dayan slapped him. A Lehava activist named Avishai Bar Yishai approached her and asked if she would also like to slap him, noting that he was older and bigger than the young man. Ben Dayan announced that she would slap anyone who called her a whore, and Bar Yishai immediately called her sharmuta, upon which Ben Dayan slapped him too. Policemen who were nearby separated the two, and arrested Ben Dayan for assault, and Bar Yishai for insulting a public servant. Both were released on bail. In July 2016, two years after the incident, an indictment was filed against Ben Dayan for assault. After a short time, the indictment was canceled.
Lectures Ben Dayan is a prolific lecturer on feminism, gender, ethnicity, Mizrahi topics, activism, and the sociology of Israel. Among her more noted events: A series of lectures in 2017 on the subject of "The Cultural Property Rights of Indigenous Peoples", based on an article she previously published in Domus magazine; a 2016 panel on "Feminism and Judaism", with Rabbi Oury Cherki; lectures on Mizrahi identity at the Suzanne Dellal Center; and a lecture series in 2012 on "Art & Racism", following her article about the public fracas caused by her accusation that the art of Zoya Cherkassky is racist, "Don't Post Art to Facebook, all the 'Arsim' Will Come".
Legal issues Sexual harassment at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem In May 2008, when Ben Dayan was a graduate student at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, she published an article in the online magazine "Ha'oketz" entitled "'A' from the Sociology Department", in which she described a romantic relationship she had with one of her professors, Gideon Aran, during her undergraduate studies, and the harassment and abuse he perpetrated upon her after the relationship ended, on both sexual and racist bases. This was the first publicized accusation of its kind, and the article generated media tumult, and subsequently, additional complaints were filed against other faculty members, including several complaints against Professor Eyal Ben-Ari. Following these complaints, and the process that she initiated against Aran, the university was forced to deal with the issue of relations between faculty and students, a subject for which there had been until then no clear official policy.