Newsgroup: it.cultura.ebraica
Titolo: esilarante?

la battaglia di Naomi Ragen (e di altre donne ortodosse) contro la 
segregazione sugli autobus
http://www.momentmag.com/moment/issues/2010/08/Opinion-Ragen.html
Israel’s Women Are Forced to the Back of the Bus
Back in 2003 I took a bus from downtown Jerusalem to my home in the 
northern suburb of Ramot, a mixed secular and modern Orthodox 
neighborhood. One stop into the ride, a large, sweating haredi man hung 
over me threateningly, demanding that I move to the back of the bus. My 
astonished refusal was met with a fusillade of disgusting verbal abuse 
almost the entire ride.
Soon after, I described my experience in a Jerusalem Post article, 
including the disrespectful and dismissive response of the Egged bus 
company, which sent me a form letter insisting no such buses existed and 
that all seating on public buses was “voluntary.” I called it “Egged and 
the Taliban.”
 From then on, I took taxis. Fortunately, about four years later, I 
received an e-mail from Orly Erez-Likhovski, an attorney with Israel 
Religious Action Center of the Israel Movement for Progressive Judaism, 
who asked if I would be willing to join a lawsuit against the Ministry 
of Transportation, as well as Egged and Dan, the bus companies which 
legally monopolize all public transportation in Israel and which are 
highly subsidized by taxpayers.
Sex-segregated buses in Israel began in the 1990s when the Ministry of 
Transportation agreed to allow ultra-Orthodox in Bnei Brak to 
sex-segregate several lines in their municipality. This consisted of 
opening both front and back doors and forcing women to board, sit and 
exit only at the back. Thus, a woman would have to stand the entire ride 
even if empty seats were available at the front. Women bold enough to 
take those empty seats would find themselves barraged, as I was, with 
intimidating denunciations by the men, including the driver. Hardly a 
“voluntary” system.
While Israelis were busy with the Intifada and wars, extremist religious 
machers quietly expanded their hegemony over hundreds of bus lines and 
millions of unsuspecting passengers. By the time we filed our lawsuit on 
January 24, 2007, these lines�€"unmarked and unregulated�€"were all over the 
country. The only direct route from Ashdod to Arad was on a 
sex-segregated bus. The alternative was to change buses twice, paying 60 
NIS instead of 24 NIS and riding four hours instead of two. This was, 
and is, also true of Ashdod to Safed, Jerusalem to Petach Tikva and many 
other routes.
Like me, the four other plaintiffs, all religious, had their own horror 
stories. One young woman wearing (gasp!) slacks had been threatened with 
ejection from a bus in the middle of the night by haredi male passengers 
empowered by a like-thinking bus driver. Chana Pasternak, the head of 
Kolech, the largest Orthodox women’s organization in Israel, was 
humiliated and verbally abused by a haredi man young enough to be her 
son. In addition to the formal plaintiffs, there was Miriam Shear, a 
Canadian grandmother on her way to the Western Wall on a non 
sex-segregated bus, who was thrown to the floor, had her head covering 
ripped off and was physically beaten for refusing to sit in the back.
Again and again, our case was postponed. Finally on March 8, 2008, the 
Supreme Court asked the Ministry of Transportation to appoint a 
committee to study the issue and come up with recommendations. On 
December 8, 2008, my fellow petitioners and I received a sympathetic 
hearing. The committee’s request for public feedback resulted in 
thousands of replies, the majority against sex segregation. But many 
also wrote supporting such buses, the result of a haredi men’s campaign 
to fight against our lawsuit. This is not to say there weren’t haredi 
women sincerely supportive of sex-segregation on buses. Some told me 
that they have been victims of sexual harassment by haredi men on 
non-segregated buses. But even they see the dangers: First the buses, 
then the streets, offices, shopping malls, planes, trains….This is not 
wild imagination. There are already streets in Jerusalem in Geulah and 
Mea Shearim marked “men” or “women.” National insurance offices in Ramat 
Beit Shemesh have separate hours for men and women. And demands to 
sex-segregate El Al planes have been voiced. Where does it end?
A frustrating year and a half behind schedule, on October 26, 2009, the 
committee issued its report and recommendations. But Minister of 
Transportation Yisrael Katz (Likud), decided not to submit the 
recommendations to the Court “until he had a chance to study them.”
We, however, did sneak a peek. To our joy, the report said plainly that 
enforcing sex-segregated buses was a violation of Israel’s democratic 
values and that no government office should be involved in such 
segregation. In the months that followed, however, Minister Katz, under 
pressure from haredi politicians, refused to stand behind his own 
committee’s recommendations. Instead, he asked the Court to approve the 
exact opposite: sex-segregated buses which were “voluntary,” echoing the 
Egged spokesman who had so infuriated me years before. What Katz 
envisioned were bus signs asking passengers to sit separately but 
indicating it was not mandatory. He further suggested that there be a 
“trial period” in which this “voluntary” system would be implemented, to 
ascertain if violence could be avoided.
The justices were unimpressed. They asked Katz to show why his 
committee’s recommendations should not be fully implemented immediately, 
and the sex-segregated buses cancelled altogether. By now, Minister Katz 
has long passed his legal deadline to respond. And so, we have filed yet 
again a demand that he do so.
We await the minister’s belated response or, lacking that, finally, 
after so many years, a courageous decision on the part of our Supreme 
Court, to guard the democratic rights of all Israel’s citizens from the 
constant, dangerous erosion fueled by religious fanaticism coupled with 
political expediency: a decision that will allow us all to finally take 
our seats.
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Per il manifesto, le FAQ ed un'interfaccia Web visita 
http://www.e-brei.net/


E pensare che i posti al fondo sono sempre i più ambiti....
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