In my last post, I stated the obvious: That despite the US media’s constant statements to the contrary, Israel is a theocracy, not a democracy. There’s a whole lot of reasons why this is clearly the case, but today, we read of women being forced to sit in the back of buses because, well that’s what the Orthodox say is suppose to be. When religious interpretations trump civil rights in a state – that is a theocracy.
Reuters Israel “back of the bus” rule sparks religious row
Tue Jan 15, 2008 4:12am EST By Rebecca Harrison JERUSALEM (Reuters)
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.
U.S.-born novelist Naomi Ragen, one of the women behind the High Court petition, said she was insulted and physically threatened when she accidentally boarded a mehadrin bus and refused to move to the back. Another woman was reported to have been spat at and beaten for refusing to move. Ragen, herself an Orthodox Jew, described the incidents on her website as “bullying women in the name of God”.
The Free Palestine Blog 