Yael Bar Zohar shocked: billboard featuring her was vandalized, face painted black

TV presenter and actress Yael Bar Zohar was shocked to discover that a public billboard featuring her was completely defaced and her face painted black. The billboard, which is part of an advertisement for the Clalit health fund, was placed and vandalized in Rishon LeZion.

At this stage, it is unclear who is behind the act, according to a report on Walla, but this is not the first time this phenomenon has occurred in the public sphere. The practice of defacing public billboards has struck before, and the faces of actresses, models, female politicians, doctors, and even the photos of female hostages while they were in captivity, have been damaged.

The phenomenon of excluding women from the public sphere and defacing their images on billboards or buses is not new. It has long since ceased to occur only in ultra-Orthodox population centers, but is leaking into the heart of general cities, onto major traffic routes, and into spaces that were supposed to be a symbol of liberalism and pluralism.

Over the years, bills have been discussed in the Knesset to set an increased and dedicated administrative fine of about 29,000 shekels for defacing advertisements on a gender basis. However, the main problem remains on the ground: an overwhelming majority of the cases opened by the police for defacing images of women are closed due to an "unknown perpetrator," and almost never result in the imposition of a fine or an actual indictment.