- Women! Move To The Back Of The (Judaic) Bus!
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- The request in the Jim Crow South made infamous by New
York liberals, for blacks to "move to the back of the bus,"
made Rosa Parks a lay saint among the American Establishment. Will Miriam
Shear become just as much of an icon in the fight against segregation?
Miriam is a second-class citizen in the religion of Orthodox Judaism and
even though the US media do everything they can to constantly remind Americans
of tyrannical Islamic "modesty patrols" and "the low status
of Muslim women," in truth Judaic women have an even lower status:
"meat from the butcher shop" as the Talmud calls them.
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- The following report from Haaretz shows the level of
filthy spitting, sadistic violence and expert lying that is routine among
the 'Holy people' the world is instructed to venerate.
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- And if you think the misogyny of Orthodox Judaic males
is limited only to buses, note the ominous statement of Miss Shear, "'No.
This is not a synagogue. I am not going to sit in the back.'"
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- Jewish Woman Beaten On Jerusalem Bus
For Refusing To Move To Rear Seat
- By Daphna Berman
- Haaretz (major Israeli newspaper)
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- 12-17-6
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- A woman who reported a vicious attack by an ad-hoc "modesty
patrol" on a Jerusalem bus last month is now lining up support for
her case and may be included in a petition to the High Court of Justice
over the legality of sex-segregated buses.
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- Miriam Shear says she was traveling to pray at the Western
Wall in Jerusalem's Old City early on November 24 when a group of ultra-Orthodox
(Haredi) men attacked her for refusing to move to the back of the Egged
No. 2 bus. She is now in touch with several legal advocacy and women's
organizations, and at the same time, waiting for the police to apprehend
her attackers.
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- In her first interview since the incident, Shear says
that on the bus three weeks ago, she was slapped, kicked, punched and pushed
by a group of men who demanded that she sit in the back of the bus with
the other women. The bus driver, in response to a media inquiry, denied
that violence was used against her, but Shear's account has been substantiated
by an unrelated eyewitness on the bus who confirmed that she sustained
an unprovoked "severe beating."
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- Shear, an American-Israeli woman who currently lives
in Canada, says that on a recent five-week vacation to Israel, she rode
the bus daily to the Old City to pray at sunrise. Though not defined by
Egged as a sex-segregated "mehadrin" bus, women usually sit in
the back, while men sit in the front, as a matter of custom.
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- "Every two or three days, someone would tell me
to sit in the back, sometimes politely and sometimes not," she recalled
this week in a telephone interview. "I was always polite and said
'No. This is not a synagogue. I am not going to sit in the back.'"
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- But Shear, a 50-year-old religious woman, says that on
the morning of the 24th, a man got onto the bus and demanded her seat -
even though there were a number of other seats available in the front of
the bus.
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- "I said, I'm not moving and he said, 'I'm not asking
you, I'm telling you.' Then he spat in my face and at that point, I was
in high adrenaline mode and called him a son-of-a-bitch, which I am not
proud of. Then I spat back. At that point, he pushed me down and people
on the bus were screaming that I was crazy. Four men surrounded me and
slapped my face, punched me in the chest, pulled at my clothes, beat me,
kicked me. My snood [hair covering] came off. I was fighting back and kicked
one of the men in his privates. I will never forget the look on his face."
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- Shear says that when she bent down in the aisle to retrieve
her hair covering, "one of the men kicked me in the face. Thank God
he missed my eye. I got up and punched him. I said, 'I want my hair covering
back' but he wouldn't give it to me, so I took his black hat and threw
it in the aisle."
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- 'Stupid American'
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- Throughout the encounter, Shear says the bus driver "did
nothing." The other passengers, she says, blamed her for not moving
to the back of the bus and called her a "stupid American with no sechel
[common sense.] People blamed me for not knowing my place and not going
to the back of the bus where I belong."
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- According to Yehoshua Meyer, the eyewitness to the incident,
Shear's account is entirely accurate. "I saw everything," he
said. "Someone got on the bus and demanded that she go to the back,
but she didn't agree. She was badly beaten and her whole body sustained
hits and kicks. She tried to fight back and no one would help her. I tried
to help, but someone was stopping me from getting up. My phone's battery
was dead, so I couldn't call the police. I yelled for the bus driver to
stop. He stopped once, but he didn't do anything. When we finally got to
the Kotel [Western Wall], she was beaten badly and I helped her go to the
police."
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- Shear says that when she first started riding the No.
2 line, she did not even know that it was sometimes sex-segregated. She
also says that sitting in the front is simply more comfortable. "I'm
a 50-year-old woman and I don't like to sit in the back. I'm dressed appropriately
and I was on a public bus."
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- "It is very dangerous for a group of people to take
control over a public entity and enforce their will without going through
due process," she said. "Even if they [Haredim who want a segregated
bus] are a majority - and I don't think they are - they have options available.
They can petition Egged or hire their own private line. But as long as
it's a public bus, I don't care if there are 500 people telling me where
to sit. I can sit wherever I want and so can anyone else."
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- Meyer says that throughout the incident, the other passengers
blamed Shear for not sitting in the back. "They'll probably claim
that she attacked them first, but that's totally untrue. She was abused
terribly, and I've never seen anything like it."
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- Word of Shear's story traveled quickly after she forwarded
an e-mail detailing her experience. She has been contacted by a number
of groups, including Shatil, the New Israel Fund's Empowerment and Training
Center for Social Change; Kolech, a religious women's forum; the Israel
Religious Action Center (IRAC), the legal advocacy arm of the local Reform
movement; and the Jewish Orthodox Feminist Alliance (JOFA).
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- In the coming month, IRAC will be submitting a petition
to the High Court of Justice against the Transportation Ministry over the
issue of segregated Egged buses. IRAC attorney Orly Erez-Likhovski is in
touch with Shear and is considering including her in the petition.
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- Although the No. 2 Jerusalem bus where the incident occurred
is not actually defined as a mehadrin line, Erez-Likhovski says that Shear's
story is further proof that the issue requires legal clarification. About
30 Egged buses are designated as mehadrin, mostly on inter-city lines,
but they are not marked to indicate this. "There's no way to identify
a mehadrin bus, which in itself is a problem," she said.
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- "Theoretically, a person can sit wherever they want,
even on a mehadrin line, but we're seeing that people are enforcing [the
gender segregation] even on non-mehadrin lines and that's the part of the
danger," she said.
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- On a mehadrin bus, women enter and exit through the rear
door, and the seats from the rear door back are generally considered the
"women's section." A child is usually sent forward to pay the
driver.
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- The official responses
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- In a response from Egged, the bus driver denied that
Shear was physically attacked in any way.
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- "In a thorough inquiry that we conducted, we found
that the bus driver does not confirm that any violence was used against
the complainant," Egged spokesman Ron Ratner wrote.
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- "According to the driver, once he saw that there
was a crowd gathering around her, he stopped the bus and went to check
what was going on. He clarified to the passengers that the bus was not
a mehadrin line and that all passengers on the line are permitted to sit
wherever they want on the bus. After making sure that the passengers returned
to their seats, he continued driving."
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- The Egged response also noted that their drivers "are
not able and are not authorized to supervise the behavior of the passengers
in all situations."
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- Ministry of Transportation spokesperson Avner Ovadia
said in response that the mehadrin lines are "the result of agreements
reached between Egged and Haredi bodies" and are therefore unconnected
to the ministry.
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- A spokesperson for the Jerusalem police said the case
is still under investigation.
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- http://www.revisionisthistory.org/cgi-bin/store/agora.cgi?p_id=10031>
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