Holocaust survivors blast Nazi garb at protest

[Neil]

Good luck to all the secular Israelis in their fight for a secular state.

Indeed.

Also good luck to the non-settlers fighting the aggressive settler movements who've taken to acts of violence on Palestinians, burning down Mosques and attacking the IDF.

That's what happens when Israel decided to allow themselves to be colonized by non-Jewish Russians.

[Capetan Mihali]

I thought about making a thread on the spitting-on-an-8-year-old story a few days ago:

http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Middle-East/2011/1227/A-spitting-incident-sets-off-Israeli-frustration-with-Jewish-zealotry

Beit Shemesh, Israel

The harassment of an 8-year-old girl by ultra-Orthodox Jews in the Jerusalem suburb of Beit Shemesh is shaking Israel's self image to the core, stirring nationwide outrage about escalating religious zealotry and creeping public segregation of women.

For months, Na'ama Margolis and classmates at her school endured insults and spitting by the neighborhood's strict Orthodox Jews – known in Hebrew as "Haredi,'' or God fearing – who complain that they should dress more modestly. When their story was featured on a weekend news magazine several days ago, it ignited already simmering worry about efforts of the ultra-religious to exclude women in places like public buses or the army.

"I think the whole country needs to wake up ... that it's not just a corner in Beit Shemesh,'' said Ailsa Coleman, a 42-year-old neighbor who volunteered to escort Margolis's classmates outside the school and was also spat on. "It's happening everywhere."

In recent days there have been repeated clashes between ultra-Orthodox protesters and police and attacks on news crews in Beit Shemesh. Thousands of protesters gathered in the city with signs reading "Segregation of Women is my Red Line'' and warning of an Israeli theocracy.

The segregation reflects the Haredi minority's growing influence on Israel's politics and economy. Civil rights advocates and Beit Shemesh locals say that the government and law enforcement authorities have turned a blind eye, even though the examples of exclusion proliferate.

They point to special arrangements for ultra-Orthodox communities where women are relegated to the rear of the buses, have separate lines in eateries, and sit in health clinic waiting rooms that are divided by gender. There are also efforts to erase images of women from public billboards. Last week, a secular woman was heckled for riding in the front of one of the buses and pressured to move.

"This ties into whether we are democratic liberal state that protects women's rights, or whether we're not going to be a democracy in a future," said Einat Horovitz, a spokeswoman of the Religious Action Center, an Israeli nonprofit which challenged the bus segregation in Israel's Supreme Court. "Politicians don't realize that being a democracy isn't only about the rule of the majority, its about protecting human rights and the rights of the minority, and this has escaped our politicians."

In Beit Shemesh, prominent signs calling for modest dress and excluding women from certain sidewalks near synagogues have been tolerated for years in the ultra-Orthodox neighborhood near the elementary school, which happens to serve a less strict group of Orthodox Jews.

In a statement, the Haredi rabbis of Beit Shemesh insisted that even without the signs, ultra-Orthodox women would follow rules of modesty.

"It is for the honor toward women and the fact that Judaism orders the separation of men and women in the public sphere," the statement read, according to a transcript printed on the Ynet News website. It also asserted that the ultra-Orthodox wish to live in homogenous communities to allow them to pass on their way of life.

Since its inception, Israel has allowed ultra-Orthodox communities remain cut off from the mainstream, allowing them to set up autonomous school systems, granting them exemptions from compulsory military service, and providing them with subsidies so they can focus on religious study rather than joining the workforce. But their growing numbers – their birthrate is much higher than the Israeli average – have sparked worry about the ramifications for the Israeli economy and the influence on society.

Residents and officials said that Haredi community is taking out its frustration on the pupils because they wanted the school for their own children. In Beit Shemesh, there's an ongoing turf battle between the ultra-Orthodox and the rest of the community for new building in the city.

In response to the uproar, ultra Orthodox partners in Israel's coalition accused Israel's secular media of a witch hunt against their community and accused Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of selling out a loyal constituency for political convenience. Mr. Netanyahu's said on Tuesday that segregation of women "contradicts traditional spirit of the Tanakh (Jewish scriptures, or Old Testament) and Judaism, and contradicts the democratic principles on which Israel was based."

Observers say that the uproar over segregation shows an enduring chasm between the ultra-Orthodox and the Israeli mainstream.

"Modern society has broken a lot of barriers, and religious society has kept some of those barriers up," says Aaron Katsman, a financial advisor and former economic columnist the ultra-Orthodox newspaper Hamodia. "Both sides don't know how to deal with each other. You have a meeting of two groups which have never spoken to each other, and never met each other, and neither side knows how to deal with it." 

[Neil]

Golda Meir would have fucked these bitches up.

Still, Middle Easterners are Middle Easterners.  These guys are the proof that the Israelis aren't different from the Muslims, and that we should just let them all kill each other.

[Valmy]

Being in the Middle East was bound to rub off on them.  Heck involvement in that region has had very negative effects on us and we are only doing it from a distance.

Of course it could also be the whole 'Russian Jews move in and ruin everything' theory but one thing is for sure is that Isreal is becoming more and more of a religious Jewish state as time moves on.

[Capetan Mihali]

I think the Brooklynites have probably contributed more to this than the Russians.

[Valmy]

I think the Brooklynites have probably contributed more to this than the Russians.

Brooklynites are a force behind religious Jews taking over, or rather becoming more and more influential, in Israel?  I am not disagreeing I was just not aware of this.

[Sheilbh]

Of course it could also be the whole 'Russian Jews move in and ruin everything' theory but one thing is for sure is that Isreal is becoming more and more of a religious Jewish state as time moves on.

My understanding is that Russian Jews moving to Israel are overwhelmingly secular and actually quite anti-Orthodox (not least because they do national service, while the Orthodox don't).  I think the negative impact of Russian immigration has been an increase in racism against Arabs both Israeli and Palestinian, extreme nationalism ('Our Israel') and some quite authoritarian, Putin-esque leaders.  They're predominately, I think, part of the problem in the settler movement.  The effect of the Russians isn't Israel becoming more religious.  It's becoming more racist and less democratic.

The religious nuts in East Jerusalem trying to enforce gender segregation and attacking small girls are, I imagine, far more linked to Brooklyn than Brest-Litovsk, as Mihali says.

The problem is that I think both pose different challenges for mainstream Zionism and the relationship between Israel and the diaspora, especially American Jewry.

One liberal American Jewish writer's suggested that perhaps one answer would be for an Israeli government to include one of the Arab parties in the government.  That way you'd remove the dangerous reliance that so many Israeli governments have had to place on extremists.  Basically if you put up a cordon sanitaire around 10-20% of the Knesset then the power of extremists in the remaining 80% is far greater.

[Malthus]

Being in the Middle East was bound to rub off on them.  Heck involvement in that region has had very negative effects on us and we are only doing it from a distance.

Of course it could also be the whole 'Russian Jews move in and ruin everything' theory but one thing is for sure is that Isreal is becoming more and more of a religious Jewish state as time moves on.

I think the opposite may be happening - what we are seeing is a backlash by the secular majority. For various reasons the religious minority has had its own way for a long time and now the pendulum appears to be swinging the other way. 

I think it has essentially nothing to do with middle east wierdness rubbing off on the Israelis, and everything to do with purely indigenous developments. You see some of the same seperation in Jewish communities in NA - the ultra-orthodox are increasingly viewed as a completely seperate group. It was only a common persecution that ever thrust them together in the first place, as ultra orthodox and secular Jews have very little other than common ancestry in common.

Thing is, this only becomes news because the secular majority are pissed off and fed up - and unlike in the past, are willing to express it.

[Malthus]

Of course it could also be the whole 'Russian Jews move in and ruin everything' theory but one thing is for sure is that Isreal is becoming more and more of a religious Jewish state as time moves on.

My understanding is that Russian Jews moving to Israel are overwhelmingly secular and actually quite anti-Orthodox (not least because they do national service, while the Orthodox don't).  I think the negative impact of Russian immigration has been an increase in racism against Arabs both Israeli and Palestinian, extreme nationalism ('Our Israel') and some quite authoritarian, Putin-esque leaders.  They're predominately, I think, part of the problem in the settler movement.  The effect of the Russians isn't Israel becoming more religious.  It's becoming more racist and less democratic.

The religious nuts in East Jerusalem trying to enforce gender segregation and attacking small girls are, I imagine, far more linked to Brooklyn than Brest-Litovsk, as Mihali says.

The problem is that I think both pose different challenges for mainstream Zionism and the relationship between Israel and the diaspora, especially American Jewry.

One liberal American Jewish writer's suggested that perhaps one answer would be for an Israeli government to include one of the Arab parties in the government.  That way you'd remove the dangerous reliance that so many Israeli governments have had to place on extremists.  Basically if you put up a cordon sanitaire around 10-20% of the Knesset then the power of extremists in the remaining 80% is far greater.

I love how the Russians can be boogeymen in completey opposite ways.  Insane religous or insane anti-religious racists? Take yer pick. I'm not saying either is right or wrong, mind. Frankly I have no idea. Just that being blamed for every problem seems to be par for the course.

The settler movement is at least as much an American phenominon as Russian.

[Valmy]

My understanding is that Russian Jews moving to Israel are overwhelmingly secular and actually quite anti-Orthodox (not least because they do national service, while the Orthodox don't).

Correct me if I am wrong but I thought in Israel everybody who is religious is Orthodox.  The divide among the religious is between the ultras and the non-ultras.  Because plenty of the religious orthodox leaders have done military service.

[DGuller]

I think the Brooklynites have probably contributed more to this than the Russians.

Brooklynites are a force behind religious Jews taking over, or rather becoming more and more influential, in Israel?  I am not disagreeing I was just not aware of this.

My brother-in-law moved to Brooklyn because Israel wasn't Jewish enough.  When it comes to complete Jewish wackjobs intentionally disconnected from the real world, Brooklyn is the HQ. 

Russian immigrants are actually the exact opposite, unless they fell for the religious pitch.  Russians Jews are generally very secular or even atheist.

[Eddie Teach]

I love how the Russians can be boogeymen in completey opposite ways.  Insane religous or insane anti-religious racists? Take yer pick. I'm not saying either is right or wrong, mind. Frankly I have no idea. Just that being blamed for every problem seems to be par for the course.

It's kind of like how they can be car enthusiasts who are unable to pump their own gas.

[Valmy]

My brother-in-law moved to Brooklyn because Israel wasn't Jewish enough.

So Brooklyn is making Israel less religious then

[DGuller]

I love how the Russians can be boogeymen in completey opposite ways.  Insane religous or insane anti-religious racists? Take yer pick. I'm not saying either is right or wrong, mind. Frankly I have no idea. Just that being blamed for every problem seems to be par for the course.

It's kind of like how they can be car enthusiasts who are unable to pump their own gas.

Fuck you, dear. 

[Sheilbh]

Correct me if I am wrong but I thought in Israel everybody who is religious is Orthodox.  The divide among the religious is between the ultras and the non-ultras.  Because plenty of the religious orthodox leaders have done military service.

That's right.  It's the ultra-Orthodox, such as these ones who are protesting, who don't do service.