Israel "back of the bus" rule sparks religious row

[Scurrilous]

<snip>

"Every time Israeli student Iris Yoffe takes the bus to Jerusalem, she has to be ready for abuse from ultra-Orthodox Jews who say she should be kept off because she's wearing trousers.

Assuming she makes it onto the bus at all -- on several occasions groups of Orthodox men have tried to block the door -- Yoffe, 24, heads for the "women's section" at the back of the bus, keeps her head down and tries to ignore the insults.

"I end up feeling helpless and humiliated, like an outsider," said Yoffe, whose public bus from her home in northern Israel to Jerusalem has separate male and female seating because it runs through an ultra-Orthodox community.

A row over Israel's buses underscores the schism between its ultra-Orthodox minority -- who believe women should don long skirts and stay away from men in public -- and those who want to keep the country, and its public transport system, secular."

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[ChairmanAgnostic]

1. I used to live next door to

a dorm for ultra orthodox students. They would make comments about my spousette, loud enough to hear.

Interestingly the devout muslims on the other side of my house and the orthodox students got along great.

[Vegasaurus]

2. I have no use for fundamentalist nuts

of any stripe, but the fact is, Muslim women are separated from men in worship and many other places.

There is actually quite a lot of overlap in thinking about modesty, women's separateness, role of procreation, etc, amongst religious Jews and religious Muslims. If this girl is from a religious family, she shouldn't have felt this all that strange at all, actually.

[Scurrilous]

3. Ms. Assailed for Rejecting Israel Ad

<snip>

"The American Jewish Congress is assailing Ms. magazine as hostile toward Israel for refusing to run an ad submitted by the AJC which heralds the fact that women now hold three of Israel's most powerful positions.

"What other conclusion can we reach except that the publishers — and if the publishers are right, a significant number of Ms. magazine readers — are so hostile to Israel that they do not even want to see an ad that says something positive about Israel?" asked Richard Gordon, president of the congress.

He termed the rejection "disgusting and despicable."

The ad rejected by Ms. had a three-word message — "This is Israel" — accompanied by photographs of Supreme Court President Dorit Beinish, Vice Prime Minister and Foreign Affairs Minister Tzipi Livni, and Knesset Speaker Dalia Itzik.

The executive editor of Ms., Katherine Spillar, said Tuesday the charge that the feminist magazine is anti-Israeli is "untrue and unfair." She cited numerous articles it has run on Israeli women, including a profile of Livni in its current issue.

Spillar said Ms. accepts only "mission-driven advertisements" primarily from nonprofit, nonpartisan organizations that promote women's equality and social goals.

"In Ms. magazine's judgment, the ad submitted by AJCongress for consideration was inconsistent with this policy," Spillar said.

"Not only could the ad be seen as favoring certain political parties within Israel over other parties, but also with its slogan 'This is Israel,' the ad implied that women in Israel hold equal positions of power with men," Spillar added. "Israel, like every other country, has far to go to reach equality for women."

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[damntexdem]

4. Judeofascism?

;-)

[msmcghee]

5. This has been up for quite a while now with no comments.

Strange that.

[eyl]

6. Court asked to halt segregation of sexes on buses

The High Court of Justice will hear a petition this morning against sex-segregated public buses known as mehadrin lines, which are meant to serve the ultra-Orthodox community.

Orthodox American-Israeli novelist Naomi Ragen and the Israel Religious Action Center, the advocacy arm of Israel's Reform movement, brought the petition a year ago in a bid to sharply reduce the operation of sex-segregated buses and prevent men and women from being forced to sit separately. Advertisement

The state argues that the segregation - with men sitting in front and women in back - is voluntary and that the companies operating the mehadrin lines "are prohibited from forcing the voluntary arrangement on the rest of the passengers who are not interested in it.

Haaretz

[ProgressiveMuslim]

7. Do those ultra-orthodox recognize civil law? nt

[eyl]

8. Some do, some don't

but what is being asked here is for the bus companies and the government - not the haredim - to force "desegregation".

[Violet_Crumble]

15. But aren't the bus companies publicly funded?

If they are, then it would be the govt's responsibility to deal with incidents of discrimination against women. An easy solution for the govt would be for them not to fund these sorts of buses and ban them from using public bus-stops...

I hope the court case is successful...

[eyl]

17. It's problematic

Bear in mind there are only three public bus companies in Israel (ignoring those which only function inside towns) - each of which services particular areas - and AFAIK all the mehadrin bus lines in question are run by the largest, Egged. The company is subsidized by the government in order for them to keep open lines which would otherwise be unprofitable. So if the government cuts funds, and Egged chooses not to back down, what may happen is that the company will just dump the unprofitable lines - leaving more remote and small towns without any public transport. (I'm also not sure if the government can legally bar them from stopping at bus stops)

[LeftishBrit]

9. Hope the court rules in favour of the petitioners!

[ProgressiveMuslim]

10. Read an interesting piece on Progressive Israel's relationship to the religious:

Citizenship, Zionism and Separation of Religion from the State
Written by Michael Warschawski, Alternative Information Center (AIC)
Monday, 31 December 2007
Tag it:

It is customary to say that Haaretz is a progressive newspaper. However, its progressive character is generally no where to be seen when Israel initiates a war against one of its neighbors—its opposition to the previous two wars came only after the newspaper provided support to the policies of the government and the military—or abuses against the Palestinian people. However, when dealing with matters of religion, and particularly hatred of the religious, the progressiveness of Haaretz, its editors and community of readers, is endless.

In the op-ed from 27 December, the writers rail against the “ultra-orthodox blockade” that prevents the conversion of hundreds of thousands of new immigrants from the former Soviet Union: “the ultra-orthodox rabbis are pressuring and threatening the government, and causing intentional difficulties for the rabbinical courts, which are acting under state authority. The ultra-orthodox are truly not interested in additional members joining the chosen people.”

This criticism represents a common opinion amongst what is dubbed “the progressive liberal camp” in Israel.

Truly liberal? And indeed progressive?

This same camp accepts the assumption that in a Jewish state, full and real citizenship is possible only for a Jew. And not just for any Jew, but a Jew according to the definition of the religious establishment. It is difficult to perceive in such a definition, any sign of progress or enlightenment. This definition is based on the legitimization of an ethnic state, in contrast to a civil one, as the defining criteria for residency and connection to the land.

Indeed, the religious perception does not always suit national interests, including the need, in a Zionist state, to increase as much as possible the number of non-Arabs in the population registry. This contradiction, between the reliance on religion for the definition of citizenship, and the national need to increase the number of residents defined as Jews, compels the liberals to become analysts and reformers of religion. Members of Knesset who desecrate Shabbat in public, and non-religious newspapers, rely on structures of the religious canon to bolster their ideology and national interests! This is unacceptable interference in the internal affairs of religion, generally characteristic of totalitarian regimes that bend religion to their needs. This has absolutely nothing to do with progress and liberalism.

Of course, there exists another way: to preserve the autonomy of religion through a separation between religion and the needs of the state. This path prevents the interference of religion in state affairs, but also ensures that the state does not interfere in religious affairs. It protects the citizen from interference of religion in her/his private life, and further preserves the possibility that believers can live their lives as they see fit. This is the meaning of the concept of “secularism,” which is one of the foundational characteristics of modern democracy.

The editors of Haaretz and their friends from the liberal camp, however, are not secular at all. The majority loathe religious people with a racist hatred, but do not raise the idea of separating the state from religion, for religion provides them with justification for the claim to exclusive ownership over the territory, in addition to the definition of citizenship that removes the Palestinian from the whole and leaves them, in best case, in the position of second-class citizens.

In order for Israel to be transformed into a democratic state, it must, amongst other things, become a secular state. That is to say, religion needs to be made the private affair of each citizen, with no attempt to determine what is a “reasonable religion,” a “progressive religion” or a “modern religion.” This is the democratic right of each citizen, to live according to her/his religion. In a secular state, religion does not determine who a citizen is and what the rights of each citizen are, and the state does not determine who has the right to belong to one religious group or another. In a democratic state, the religious community is a private and exclusive club, only the members of which have the right to determine who belongs and who does not.

The attempt to “convince” rabbis to convert hundreds of thousands of immigrants from the former Soviet Union is not only a racist act against Palestinians, but also gross injury to religious autonomy and a transformation of religion into a tool in the service of foreign political goals.


http://www.alternativenews.org/blogs/michael-warschawski/citizenship-zionism-and-separation-of-religion-from-the-state-20071231.html

[bemildred]

11. Well, it's a problem, all right.

As long as we allow that this is an issue "elsewhere" too, not merely in Israel, I have to agree. I like the "Congress shall make no law" part of the US Constitution on this subject.

But then, you will get people who will argue that "no law" doesn't have it's plain English meaning, but has some different meaning that the writers of the Constitution foolishly forget to spell out.

In a similar way, Israel claims to be secular and democratic and yet has this rat-maze of law that regulates religious issues and the pigeonholing of people based on their attributed religion. Some of this muddle is related to the ambiguity between Jewish as an ethnicity, and Jewish as a religion. Some of it relates the the basic conflict that exists between the notion of being any sort of ethnic or religious state and being a secular democratic state in which everyone has political "equality".

But to be fair, one must then observe that various other non-Jewish states in the region are (at best) very half-ass in there adherence to secularism and democratic values in government too, and also have poor records in their handling of ethnic minorities. Then you have Lebanon ...

And part of it is just that humans have a strong xenophobic streak and cannot be happy unless they have somebody to look down on because they are different.

[pelsar]

12. love your last line....

And part of it is just that humans have a strong xenophobic streak and cannot be happy unless they have somebody to look down on because they are different

probably one of the human races biggest problem..perhaps we should get some aliens here to take "that position"

[bemildred]

16. We could have robots or dolls? I would call mine "smacky".

But better is just to realize that you feel crappy when you are wallowing in that sort of emotion, and you should learn to avoid it.

[Shaktimaan]

13. I love it when articles like this

seek to present Israel as undemocratic or racist because they inevitably must abandon honesty to make their argument. This author apparently hasn't ever even read Haaretz if he thinks that "its progressive character is generally no where to be seen when Israel initiates a war against one of its neighbors—its opposition to the previous two wars came only after the newspaper provided support to the policies of the government and the military—or abuses against the Palestinian people."

Haaretz isn't progressive when it comes to abuses against the Palestinians?

And his assertion that the progressive camp in Israel "...accepts the assumption that in a Jewish state, full and real citizenship is possible only for a Jew. And not just for any Jew, but a Jew according to the definition of the religious establishment." is just outright bullshit.

But it is this line that highlights either his willingness to completely misrepresent Israeli society or his total and complete lack of understanding regarding the most basic elements of this conflict. "The editors of Haaretz and their friends from the liberal camp, however, are not secular at all. The majority loathe religious people with a racist hatred, but do not raise the idea of separating the state from religion, for religion provides them with justification for the claim to exclusive ownership over the territory, in addition to the definition of citizenship that removes the Palestinian from the whole and leaves them, in best case, in the position of second-class citizens."

Most authors in the anti-zionism biz play loose with the truth by leaving out important facts or by taking things drastically out of context but this guy has gone the extra mile and committed himself to just reporting on an Israel that doesn't exist outside of his imagination. He's really just flat out lying, this whole article is bullshit. It's a rare example of the genre in that regard. Thank you PM, this is quite a bold specimen.

[ProgressiveMuslim]

14. I'm not a follower of the guy

but I thought he raised some interesting issues regarding the role of religion. I just put it out there for discussion as a sub thread...!

[Scurrilous]

18. High Court suggests compromise on buses segregating men, women

<snip>

"The High Court of Justice on Tuesday told the Transportation Ministry to look into problems on bus routes in Orthodox areas that separate men and women, following the petition of the religious author Naomi Ragen and the Religious Action Center.

A number of female passengers said they were humiliated and even attacked for not using seats reserved for women at the back of some publicly-funded buses, or because of their clothing.

Justices Elyakim Rubinstein, Salim Joubran and Yoram Danziger stopped short of ordering bus companies to stop the "mehadrin" lines but asked the Transportation Ministry to form a committee within 30 days to study the problems and recommend changes.

"We think the transportation minister should create such a forum as soon as possible to allow him to hear from the Haredi (ultra-Orthodox) public and from the petitioners and their supporters," the court said."

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