YNET
NA'AMAT women's organization chairwoman pushes for limit against segregation on public transport. 'It's unthinkable that women in a democratic country are violently pushed to the back of a bus,' says Women's Lobby chairwoman
A Transport Ministry's committee convened Tuesday to discuss whether to legalize segregation between men and women on public transportation lines. Meanwhile women's organizations are joining the struggle against the separation.
Since the petition on the matter was filed to the High Court of Justice in 2007 by the Israel Religious Action Center and author Naomi Ragen, a wide front has been formed for battling the matter. Dozens of leading public figures have signed the petition calling on Transportation Minister Yisrael Katz to come out against the phenomenon, including Israel Prize Laureates A. B. Yehoshua and Haim Guri. [...]
The best solution, as in New York, is to let Israeli Charedi businessmen set up their own bus companies and seat people as they want, with mechitzas and separate seating, and the whole nine yards of freely-chosen frumkeit.
ReplyDeleteHowever, public bus companies that cater to the entire spectrum of citizens cannot enforce a Charedi-only code of tznius that will only incite and anger less strident and the secular citizens who are not up to that level of frumkeit. Lots more kiruv and Charedi hasbara to the chilonim and Mizrachistim will be required to get to that point.
Until such time as Israel becomes a total Charedi theocracy, Charedim cannot expect to bully secular-owned and run bus companies, as well as hospitals, shopping centers, even sidewalks and parking lots that belong to everyone and no-one, to conform to a Charedi-only Taliban-like code of dictatorship that can never work in a modern Western democratic state with a majority of secular citizens. Peaceful and diplomtaic action and overtures would be a lot better, something alien to the average Israeli Charedi who often-times acts more like an Arab sheik than a live-and-let-live Westerner.
Charedim fail to appreciate that the same democratic societies that give them the freedom to practice their own faith and life-style, will not allow them to cross all bounds and bounadries and give them the license to bully everyone else through random or planned violence, threats or intimidation to force opponents "succumb" to Charedi frumkeit "or else". They are going to learn the hard way that rioting and dictating like Khomeinis will not work in modern Israel.