Sale of mall in Arad to ultra-Orthodox extremists was stupid to begin with

A shopping mall in Arad was sold to the Ger Hasidic sect, and predictably, they took to establishing exclusion/erasure of women, which is illegal, and all this coming after October 7, 2023:

The mayor of the southern city of Arad issued a formal warning to the new owners of the city’s main shopping mall on Monday after reports that tenants were asked to remove images of women from storefronts and kiosks.

Mayor Yair Maayan sent a letter to members of the Ger Hasidic community — an ultra-Orthodox Jewish sect known for its strict religious observance — who recently purchased the mall.

In the letter, he said the municipality “views with severity the attempt by the buyers to change the character of a mall that serves a secular city, in an effort to alter the city’s character. An attempt to exclude women from the public sphere in violation of the law.”

For years, Arad, a small desert city in southern Israel, has been the site of tensions between members of the Ger community and longtime secular residents over the city’s identity, land use and political influence.

Last month, the dispute intensified after Arad Mall was sold in a 40 million shekel (about $13 million) deal from the Ashtrom Group and a group of local shop owners to businessmen Menachem Kain and Simcha Greenboim, who are affiliated with Ger.

Soon after the sale, shop owners reported that images of women were removed, mannequins were dressed more modestly in line with ultra-Orthodox standards of dress and the background music was changed.

In a warning letter to mall management, the city’s legal adviser, attorney Haim Shiman, wrote that any demand to remove images of women constitutes a “serious, improper and unlawful instruction.”

“The municipality or anyone on its behalf will not ignore this,” Shiman wrote. “This directive directly harms human dignity, gender equality and the fabric of public life in the State of Israel in general and in the city of Arad in particular, which is a secular and liberal city.”

Shiman added that “systematic exclusion of women from the public sphere, whether under the guise of sensitivity, modesty or any other euphemism, is not an innocent cultural matter but severe discrimination.” He said such actions normalize the erasure of women and subject public space to extremist interpretations that conflict with Israeli law and democratic values.

Under Israeli law, businesses that provide services to the public, including shopping malls, are prohibited from discriminating on the basis of gender. The municipality demanded that mall owners rescind any such instructions, restore any visual materials removed for those reasons and clarify that the new management does not promote gender-based exclusion.

“Arad will allow all populations to receive respectful and lawful service while preserving the city’s character,” Maayan said in a statement. “We will not allow any party to influence the character of a city in which an overwhelming majority of residents are secular and which functions as a secular city alongside religious and ultra-Orthodox communities that respect everyone. If the violation of the law at Arad Mall and the harm to women do not cease, the municipality will act to close the mall immediately.”

I hope they do if the new overlords refuse to cooperate and uphold the law. But based on what's to be noted next, it's uncertain if they'll follow through. For now, here's something else disturbing:

“I took it easily,” Levy said, before beginning to tear up. “What worries me is what will happen next — if someone decides to close off a street. The fact that there are no pictures of women, for example, bothers me personally. Five years ago, when there was a photo of my mother on a mourning notice because my father wanted there to be a picture so people would remember, someone came and blackened it out.” [...]

Earlier this month, Arad’s local Facebook group erupted after Israeli flags were reportedly removed from the mall. The city’s director general responded: “This is a private place. Inside the store, he cannot tell anyone what to put up. In the public area, it is his right, and there is nothing to be done about it.”

This is another example of how such sects are bad news, and it's stunning the previous owners would sell out to them. What they did constitutes anti-Israelism, along with hostility to somebody else's relative. Also disturbing is what the following article says:

Some residents expressed pessimism regarding the city’s future. Local resident Shlomi Tabachnik said: “We are heading toward disaster, and it’s not just Arad, it’s the whole country. I heard the mayor threatened to close the mall. That’s a joke. It’s all talk. What is he actually capable of doing? He has two seats on the city council; they have five. One word from Gur and he’s out of office. By issuing such a statement, he is effectively admitting that the situation is improper. But that’s not all. He brought students to the city, and today several female students traveling by bus were spat on. Arad is in terrible shape.”

Well this too is very enraging, and gives religion a bad name. This is not merely an issue of religion/secularism. It's a matter of dignity, and the city hall of Arad should take legal action to buy back the mall, if they really need it at all. And they should stop approving housing projects for Haredis who rely on welfare in particular. So will they do so or not?