Tel-Chai Nation

Greer Fay Cashman continues to address the issue of anti-female discrimination committed by Haredis along with their apologists and bleeding heart liberals:

For years now, religious extremists have defaced posters containing images of women. They have spray-painted across photographs of women’s faces or have blackened them out completely, or in some cases have slashed them.

In Jerusalem, this form of religious vandalism used to be mainly in the inner city, but has now spread to suburbia. If it was based purely on the biblical commandment against making graven images, then photographs of men should also be obliterated. But that’s not the case.

In certain areas of ultra-Orthodox society, women are treated as virtually non-existent. They are not permitted to write in religious media, unless they take on a male alias or use only the initial of their first names.

Their photographs cannot be published unless it happens to be a photograph of a grand rabbi dancing with the bride, who is his granddaughter. The dancing is long distance, with each of them holding the end of a sash. The bride’s face is heavily veiled, so that no man can see it, other than her new husband when they are alone immediately after the wedding ceremony.

How fascinating. The bride wears a veil that could just as easily be akin to what Muslims wear. And something tells me it's not like what the biblical Leah and Rachel may have worn either for their weddings. But it definitely is a corruption of what you read in the Torah/Bible, and a huge exaggeration of biblical descriptions of life in remote times to boot. Why, it sounds like a combination of what Vashti, in the history of how Purim came to be, could've worn before Achashverosh divorced her and married Esther instead.

There are attempts to revive segregation in buses, which was abolished by law, though some women in ultra-Orthodox society actually prefer segregation. If that is what they want, secular women have no right to interfere in what is part of the haredi lifestyle. But painting over or slashing images of women’s faces is a different ball game – almost a form of murder in which the victim continues to breathe.

Those Haredi women who're okay with segregation do so in ways that coincide with what the whole lifestyle is built upon. It may not be right to interfere in such lifestyles, but that doesn't mean even the right-wing shouldn't protest and condemn it. Seriously. And yes, to vandalize women's images is offensive, since it's a form of dehumanization.

In the past, there have been mini-protests by women by way of slut walks, but it wasn’t ongoing and was therefore ineffective.

But now women are getting very angry, because this is more than an insult to their dignity, but also an insult to any office they hold. Posters bearing the image of Hagit Moshe, one of the deputy mayors of Jerusalem, were defaced – an incident that may later be described as the straw that broke the camel’s back. She is not the only woman whose image was vandalized, but she’s a religious woman, which in the eyes of secular women, makes the defacing all the more abhorrent.

Last week, some 50 women took to the streets in their neighborhood of Beit Hakerem and pasted photographs of themselves and other women on neighborhood billboards.

But this was merely an act of defiance.

Unless security guards are posted at every billboard to apprehend the vandals, this kind of degradation will continue. How do these men treat their mothers, their wives, their sisters, and their daughters?

But it’s not only in extreme haredi circles that the cracks in the glass ceiling have been replaced. Whereas three of the major banks were headed by women, today there is none. There are fewer women in the Knesset and in government than in recent years, and women are being dismissed from top-level jobs in government ministries.

Likewise, there are fewer women contesting in municipal elections, which will be held throughout the country at the end of October.

Efforts are being made to prevent female soldiers from serving in combat or co-ed units, and, sooner or later, efforts will be made to prevent them from serving in the army altogether. The clock is being turned back, and one does not need to be a feminist to join the fight against female regression. Women are already victims of human rights abuses, as are various minority and niche communities.

Regarding combat units, that's not a grand emergency in itself, since important points have been made that it's not like most women have the strength needed to for such situations. But if Haredi politicians are getting rid of female managers at government offices simply because of their gender, that's just wrong.

Demonstrations and the damage they cause don’t really help. If they did, Israel would not be in its current predicament.

It has gone way beyond differences between Left and Right. When deprivation and violence become the norm, everyone suffers.

And that's why, again, I firmly believe right-wingers will have to visibly protest against Haredi discrimination, and make clear it's throughly unacceptable. Mainly because, when I saw the news, I knew the left was going to milk it for all it's worth, this despite how they have lenient views on Islam by contrast. And that's why the field for discussion of these issues cannot be left solely to the left to address. The right-wing must fully address it too.

Update: since we're on the subject, see also this short article about a woman who'd left Haredi society after suffering spousal abuse, and her daughter child abuse. They and the siblings are lucky to be out of their abusive father's clutches.

Labels: haredi corruption, Israel, Jerusalem, Knesset, military, misogyny, Moonbattery