RUTHFULLY YOURS

Since Sunday, over 12 13- to 14-year-old boys from the Tel Aviv area have been arrested for repeatedly gang raping a 12-year-old girl. The case came to light after the rapists circulated a video of one of their “parties” among their classmates, and the footage made its way to the Israel Police’s Youth Crimes Investigations Unit.

It is not surprising that all hell broke loose over this horror, particularly since it took place on school premises, albeit after hours. The National Council for the Child, the Association of Rape Crisis Centers in Israel and the Education Ministry immediately issued statements of condemnation. Parents, teachers, psychologists and sociologists were then hauled into TV and radio studios to analyze the purported statistical increase in sexual violence against children and decrease in the age of its perpetrators.

Though not all the details of the case have been released, police say that the victim was not physically coerced into sexual submission, but what she endured constituted rape. First of all, she fell prey to mass manipulation, threats of exposure and a desire for popularity. Secondly, she is four years below the age of consent in Israel, making any form of acquiescence on her part irrelevant. No one, other than maybe the rapists, disputes this — especially since she was subjected to multiple partners and photographed by them.

The trouble is that the boys who raped her are also minors. This means that they, too, are protected by the law. So the debate on this issue has taken on a different tone from the usual arguments over heinous crimes and appropriate punishments. Instead, it has become labeled as a “societal ill” that has to be addressed and eradicated by — you guessed it — the government.

Several explanations for this frightening phenomenon have been suggested, among them the following: 1) Kids are reaching puberty at a younger age than previously, making them hormonally driven, but behaviorally and emotionally immature; 2) Children spend most of their time on the Internet, exposed to pornography and violence on a regular basis; 3) Television shows, even during “prime time,” are heavy on sex and light on healthy relations between men and women; 4) Commercials and other ads use vulgar female sexuality as a draw for any and all commodities; 5) Parents spend little time with their kids, due to work schedules and other stress, leaving a vacuum of supervision and communication about “right and wrong” ; and 6) Many public figures accused of rape have gotten away with serving no jail time, which conveys the message that sexual assault is not such a big deal.

Every one of these theories, by itself, is as plausible as it is disturbing. Together, they paint a bleak picture that will take a lot more than government funding and school programs to rectify. This is the bad news.

The worse news is that there is an elephant in the room whose presence nobody dares to acknowledge, for fear of having to rethink decades’ worth of assumptions about “maleness” and “femaleness.”

Indeed, amidst all the analysis about the rise of rape, not a single expert or layman has mentioned that boys are no longer taught to treat girls with respect, deference, delicacy and chivalry. They are not instructed “never to hit a girl.” They are not educated about defending a girl’s honor.

Nor are girls taught to expect such treatment. On the contrary, the message that both genders have learned in school, in the scouts and in the army — like the perverted version they witness on TV and over the Internet — is that girls are no different from boys, even with regard to sex. Courtship is considered antiquated, while casual sex is called “friendship with benefits”.

Everyone knows by now that this is a lie. And those who are too young to grasp the depths of the deception are left to fend for themselves.

The boys who recorded their disgusting deeds and distributed them to their classmates were well aware that they were doing something wrong. But they were provided with enough material from the adult world to delude themselves into pretending the pleasure was mutual.

Given the current social circumstances, the chance that this particular “societal ill” will be examined under an honest microscope is slim to nil.

Ruthie Blum is the author of “To Hell in a Handbasket: Carter, Obama, and the ‘Arab Spring.’”