Remember the bad old days of segregation and racial hatred? There are those in Israel who would bring back those days – but now the inferiors are women. There is no place for bigotry in any modern state. Here’s a quote to chew on:
“A young woman attracted national attention this month when she refused to give up her seat in the front of an inter-city bus when passengers boarding in an ultra-Orthodox neighborhood demanded she move to the back. Despite an Israeli Supreme Court ruling that banned segregation on public buses, ultra-Orthodox women sit in the rear of buses serving their communities, with men in the front.”
Get in the back of the bus girls. Jim Crow is back and you are the new niggers. Next you won’t be allowed to drive a car or go out without a male relative as an escort. Welcome to the 18th century.
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Religious limits on women spur controversy in Israel
By Joel Greenberg
BEIT SHEMESH, Israel — A sign outside a row of synagogues directing women to walk on the other side of the street has turned this town near Jerusalem into a front line of a raging national debate about the imposition of strict social codes by ultra-Orthodox zealots.
A community of 86,000 about a half-hour’s drive from Jerusalem, Beit Shemesh has a growing ultra-Orthodox population. The town has become a cauldron of tension in recent days, with crowds of black-cloaked men assaulting television crews and facing off with police, pelting them with rocks and eggs.
The trigger for the violence was a wave of Israeli media reports about ultra-Orthodox Jews in the town who had put up the controversial sign and hounded local religious schoolgirls, spitting and hurling abuse at them for what they deemed insufficiently modest dress.
The plight of one frightened girl, 8-year-old Naama Margolese, was highlighted Friday in a prime-time television report, along with the sign ordering sidewalk segregation, fueling the debate in Israel over attempts to limit the public visibility of women — a growing trend that has generated an angry backlash.
On Tuesday night, thousands of Israelis gathered in Beit Shemesh to protest religious coercion and the attempts to sideline women. Some held up signs that said: “Exclusion of women is my red line.”
In broadcast remarks hours earlier, President Shimon Peres urged people to attend the rally. “We are fighting for the soul of the nation and the essence of the state,” he said.
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