Debra Kamin

Merav Michaeli Member of Israeli Knesset and Chairwoman of the Zionist Faction © Ron Kedmi       Merav Michaeli is used to asking hard questions. The Zionist Union MK has only been involved in Israeli politics since 2013, but that handful of years in public service has been more than enough time for her to earn the label of “feminist firebrand” from The New York Times and a devoted, at times ecstatic, following among women’s rights activists for her hardline stance against traditional matrimony.   A former journalist and television documentary producer, Michaeli is perhaps the most visible and vocal of all feminists in modern-day Israel. While most well-known for her unabashed opinion that marriage should be absolved until the day that men and women have absolute equality, her track record in the Israeli Knesset is lined with dozens of smaller, tangible victories that have progressed the status of women in Israel.    She helped pass the preliminary hearing of the law for criminalizing the act of purchasing prostitution (a major shift from traditional legislative tactics of criminalizing the prostitutes themselves), and – for the first time in Israeli history – she and her colleague Shuli Mualem (MK Jewish Home) pushed through legislation that guarantees free legal representation to Israeli victims of sexual assault.   There is still a long road ahead, however. “We need equal representation – a minimum of 40% representation for each sex in parliament and in government, and,