Tel-Chai Nation

There's been more news about new cases of body/gender shaming and anti-female discrimination on Israeli public transportation that came up this week, and what's particularly angering is the question whether the guilty drivers did it deliberately to hurt the right-wing's reputation. It's certainly bound to cause serious damage to conservatives, because the MSM here will milk these issues for all they're worth. And this article elaborates on what happened in an earlier report:

Shaked Rappaport, 15, and her friends from Kibbutz Hatzor Ashdod left to go camping near the Sea of Galilee on Sunday morning. When they boarded the bus from Ashdod in the south of the country to Kfar Tabor in the north, they did not imagine that the driver would require the girls in the group to cover their bodies due to the presence of ultra-Orthodox passengers on the bus.

"We wanted to get on, and the driver asked us to cover up and sit in the back," Shaked told Ynet. "We got on, and covered ourselves with the blankets we brought for the campsite. Then the driver announced to the three boys who came with us to move to sit in the front. He separated us. We were shocked, we felt humiliated."

When the bus made a bathroom stop at Sira Junction, the girls tried to talk to the driver. "We told him that it's not legitimate that we can't sit with our friends and dress the way we want," Shaked explained. "This is a free country, and that everyone should live in the world the way they want. We sit quietly and don't disturb the other passengers. He replied that we live in a world of kibbutzniks, that this is not the real world and that it is not legitimate for us to be exposed like this."

Shaked and her friends also tried to talk to the ultra-Orthodox passengers.

"They didn't understand what the commotion was about and said it didn't bother them," she noted. "One of them told the boys that everything was fine, and that they could sit next to us. Even at the stop itself, in line for the bathroom, we talked to them and they said everything was fine - but the driver insisted that he was speaking on their behalf."

The driver claimed to the girls that this was a bus line intended for the ultra-Orthodox.

After one of them told the driver that she felt humiliated, he replied: "Tell it to the news. With this stupidity, you have no religious people at home. You live in a kibbutz, cut off from the world. You live in a Jewish state and you have to respect the people who live here. The fact that you live In the kibbutz and they brought you up like that, I'm sorry for you."

The driver added: "This is the last time I argue with you, you children. You will grow up and maybe you will realize that the education you were raised on is the worst possible education. When you get on a bus with religious and ultra-Orthodox people who respect your way, you have to respect them. You have to understand this way, this is the Jewish state. This is where you live, and this is what is happening now in this country."

When they tried to tell him that Israel is a democratic country, he interrupted them. "No democracy. What you are doing is not democratic," he said. "If you came and commented on what I told you, as far as I am concerned, you were not raised in the way of human beings. Do what you want with that. What is happening today in this country is because of your opinion. I convey, therefore, an opinion that you might pass on to your parents at home as well."

Something tells me he would never speak like that to or about Muslims, but given the chance, he'd certainly tell the kids to respect Islam. And something also tells me that, if a homosexual/transsexual man came aboard, the driver wouldn't cause any trouble for him either (what if the drivers themselves are homosexual?). Which makes this whole PR debacle all the more outraging. Because it's clear the driver was acting according to a form of what I'd call cowardly predation. And this whole incident's led to a movement that's possibly run by Reform adherents to attack the government with conspiracy theories:

The group Bonot Alternitiva (Building an Alternative) commented on the incident, saying that "this is not a mistake, it is a policy. The Israeli government is actively working to exclude and erase women from everywhere, and the spirit of the commander penetrates everywhere, as this incident proves. There is one captain who steers this dangerous ship, and he is the head the government."

Translation: they're indirectly attacking Benjamin Netanyahu, who condemned the incidents, more on which anon. Yet nobody thinks to condemn any leftists who've partnered with Haredi movements like Neturei Karta and the Satmar, the former which is even more hostile to Israel, proving they're not altruistic. (And when Haredi parties join with leftist governments, they don't have an issue with that either.) But when they have the far-left media on their side, how's this supposed to be made clear?

"The exclusion of women in the public sphere is nothing new, and recently there have more and more cases where women and young women of all ages are humiliated and harassed by men, just because they are not dressed modestly," the group said.

Hila Peleg, 21, a resident of Ashdod, planned to get on a bus passing through the city last Wednesday morning. The bus driver of the Afikim told her that on that day, the line was for ultra-Orthodox men only.

"I came to get on the bus, I knocked on his door and he told me 'no'. That I can't, because I'm a woman and it's an 'only for ultra-Orthodox men' line," she said. In another case on last Monday, also in Ashdod, Peleg had to remain standing - because an ultra-Orthodox man refused to allow her to sit next to him, according to her. Iris Amit, 50, a mother of three children from Ashdod, said that her daughter and her two friends had planned to travel by bus to a concert in Jerusalem. She says the driver told them: "I'm not sure you should get on." The children, who were pressed for time, got on anyway - and soon realized that there was a separation between women and men on the bus.

"They shouted at them 'Woman! Woman! No iPhone here! One man even covered his eyes, and a child hid his head in his father's chest. Another woman urged them to move to the back of the bus and cover themselves," she said.

And based on this, lest we forget all Haredis who behaved so crudely still have serious responsibility in this whole affair, which is exactly what led to the terrible incident in Beit Shemesh 12 years ago.

Minister of Transportation Miri Regev said in response that: "There is no place for excluding women in Israel, neither in public transportation nor anywhere else. The State of Israel is a democratic country that does not accept discrimination on the basis of gender. Any attempt to exclude women on a train, bus, plane or any other means of transportation will be met with a response. It is difficult. It is our duty to preserve the dignity of all human beings, and of course the dignity of women – all the more so in the public sphere. I have instructed the ministry's public transportation division to act so that these cases do not recur. If you encounter discrimination in public transportation, do not hesitate to report it to us."

The Nativ Express company said: "We learned about the details of the case from media inquiries, and we intend to thoroughly investigate the facts with the subcontractor company that performed this trip for Nativ Express, and take all the necessary steps in a determined attempt to prevent the recurrence of such cases. However, and under the caveat that a thorough examination has not yet been carried out, it will already be said that at the basic level Nativ Express condemns every behavior that excludes or harms any passengers on the basis of sex, race, nationality or mode of dress, and it is not correct to put up with phenomena (however sporadic and unusual they may be) such as those described by the reporter

"It should also be noted that the company regularly briefs its drivers on, among other things, proper behavior toward the traveling public and their duty to allow a free, safe and comfortable boarding and travel for every passenger, while maintaining the passenger's privacy. The conduct on the part of the subcontractor's driver, as described by the reporter, blatantly deviates from its instructions to the company's drivers and those working in it service."

Opposition Leader Yair Lapid called on Nativ Express to fire the driver. “It is not Iran here,” Lapid said in a statement.

Regev did the right thing to respond, but look how this all gave leftist Lapid a weapon to employ. He'd never take issue with Islamists doing anything remotely similar, and that's why this is all the more galling.

As noted, Netanyahu spoke out against this atrocity, and it turns out there's another incident involving a Holocaust survivor who underwent a horrific experience:

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday condemned discrimination against secular women by bus drivers or by Haredi passengers, following a recent series of such incidents.

In a terse statement, Netanyahu called for anyone who discriminates against passengers on public transportation to be punished.

“The State of Israel is a free country, in which nobody will set limits on who can use public transportation, and in which nobody will dictate where he or she will sit,” he said. “Those who do this are breaking the law and should be punished.”

Transportation Minister Miri Regev, a member of Netanyahu’s Likud party, similarly vowed no tolerance for the phenomenon, saying any case of discrimination against female riders should be dealt with “severely.”

She also said two drivers have been suspended over the latest incidents until inquiries are wrapped up.

“I again clarify: There will be no exclusion of women on public transportation. Period,” she said.

[...] Also Sunday, Tzefi Erez, an 88-year-old woman from Givatayim, told the Kan public broadcaster that a bus driver repeatedly ignored her when she asked him if she had gotten on the correct line. When the woman’s husband asked the driver why he wasn’t responding to her, the driver said that he refuses to speak to women.

“I was deeply hurt. I am a Holocaust survivor,” the woman said. “I’ve suffered enough… I came to the State of Israel, and suddenly I’m in Iran. Tomorrow they’ll tell me to cover my face.”

Now this is also alarming, because the chances are very high the driver here wasn't Haredi, but most certainly was a gender-bigot. It's absolutely offensive, and I hesitate to think how a man like that views Islam. Here's more:

Sunday's three incidents are only the latest cases of women being mistreated and discriminated against on buses because of the clothes they were wearing or simply because they were women.

At the end of July, a bus driver in Eilat refused to continue driving because a woman wearing a sleeveless crop top got on the bus.

“The moment I got on the bus, the driver said that I cannot get on like that,” she told N12. “He said I need to put on a shirt.”

A few days later, a Kavim bus driver in Emek Hefer refused to allow a 14-year-old girl on his bus because she was wearing leggings and a short-sleeved shirt on her way to the gym. The driver allegedly yelled at her “Look at yourself, get out of here.”

Last week, two women were attacked on a bus to the Dead Sea by haredi men who said they weren't dressed modestly. According to Kan, the driver told them once to leave the women alone before continuing with the journey even though they hadn't.

Even when one of the women called the police who said the driver had to stop, he only stopped for a short while and then continued, saying "I'm not stopping and not waiting for the police. I don't care."

I get the feeling this could also explain why, until now, buses may not have security cameras, or at least I can't tell if they do myself, even though I often travel by buses. But if they don't, that's why they're going to have to install them now, if that's what it takes to ensure some accountability for the drivers and other passengers who led to this PR embarrassment. The latter driver should be arrested and jailed for failure to cooperate with the law, and is guilty on his part of failure to report/prevent a crime. One of the worst things about these incidents is that they damage Israel's ability to present itself as a sane, democratic and respectable society, and the discriminators clearly couldn't give a damn.

An op-ed writer at All Israel News addressed the situation like this:

In a 2011 Supreme Court ruling, such discriminatory practices, towards women, were ruled to be illegal, but some drivers obviously think that they can, nevertheless, enforce and impose their stringent values on Israeli secular youth while, at the same time, shaming them into the corner. Going one step further, they feel the liberty to condemn the type of upbringing these girls received both at home and in school. Why now? Connecting those dots is not too difficult.

Does anyone think that this type of coercive and insulting behavior by a bus employee, who is paid to provide a service to the public, will change the hearts and minds of Israel's secular youth? Quite the opposite! Not only will it not convince them that they are, indeed, immoral kids who lack decency and honor, but it will, likely, anger other secular viewers who have all the more reason to believe that there is a sudden takeover of what constitutes a respectful way of life in the Jewish state.

It might even ruffle a few feathers among the more liberal religious members of society who do not feel that coercion is a winning formula to bring about unwanted change.

Something to consider: no matter how the girls dressed, they could be religious themselves, but don't adhere to a ludicrous dress code, and whether they live in a kibbutz, that doesn't mean they're "isolated" like the Satmar clan is, in example. That said, incidents like these definitely cause severe damage to Orthodox Judaism's reputation, and if they drive women away from religion, you can't be shocked. That's a consequence the Haredi clannists doubtless couldn't care less about. The op-ed writer alludes to these points with the following:

By the way, if layers of clothing are a gauge of what constitutes respect and the preservation of the character within the Jewish state, why was there an article, in the weekend paper, which exposed a well-known ultra-Orthodox rabbi who repeatedly abused children, finally being arrested? Why is it that this is not an isolated story?

It is exactly this kind of heavy-handed, overreaching activism, which many Israeli citizens predicted could easily try to hijack the pluralistic society which showed tolerance to a variety of people groups, who made individual lifestyle choices, that did not comport with the ultra-religious but neither sought to be disrespectful or place demands that everyone conform to their particular viewpoint.

Israel must never find itself emulating the mullahs of Iran, who have made their country a place where women are subjugated and almost completely visually erased by the layers of garb they are required to wear in order to satisfy some religious fanatics who believe that holiness and purity are an extension of not being able to feel the wind blow through your hair. Such extremism will only further drive an already huge wedge into our country, confirming that what we feared has already come upon us.

Exactly. But there's another danger in all this that the most extreme Haredis and their Useful Idiots likely won't give a damn about: what if the girls felt so shamed for their gender, they thought it could be better if they got the very sex-change operations Abigail Shrier was warning about a few months ago? It's a foregone conclusion that not only would the ultra-Orthodox extremists not care, but the girls still wouldn't find the situation any different, and might end up facing even worse situations than before. It wouldn't be shocking if even non-Jewish LGBT practitioners would celebrate upon discovering Jewish girls destroyed their bodies, all because some gender bigots here shamed their bodies and gender, and spewed out filthy crap that makes it sound like they're calling women's bodies ugly, which is offensive, and something women don't like hearing.

So will any Haredi representatives in particular start addressing this, if they don't want to reap the embarrassment this'll sow? They'd be strongly advised to do so, because now, the whole atrocity's led to womens' movements organizing a march in Bnei Brak:

Nine protest organizations, including the 'Kaplan Force' and 'Mothers on the Front' groups, are joining together to hold a 'women's march' to the haredi city of Bnei Brak next week.

The march is planned for the evening of Thursday, August 24, at 8:30 pm. Further details will be shared by the organizers at a later date.

The announcement of the march stated that "they want to throw us into the back seat of the bus, they demand that our daughters cover-up, they fired all the women who were heads of government offices, they want only us to be haredi mothers to serving soldiers. We will not agree, our children are not worth less than theirs, they want to set women back hundreds of years."

"Whoever thinks that we will let him humiliate women and girls, whoever thinks that he will be able to exclude women from the public sphere and positions of influence - is not only wrong but will encounter us on the streets," they said.

Well I hope the Haredis are happy at what this has led to. So again, are they going to start publicly addressing this? It reminds me that just recently, the Knesset parties wanted to arrange for gender segregated hours at natural springs in the country, but the attorney general vetoed it. Following what happened this week, the Haredi parties would be strongly advised to scrap any such plans altogether, because this kind of hysterical belief in being all but segregated from society is exactly what led to the latest PR debacle.

Labels: dhimmitude, haredi corruption, iran, islam, Israel, Knesset, lgbt cultism, misogyny, Moonbattery