Israel And The Growth Of The Religious Right
Offline
Jerusalem mayor battles ultra-orthodox groups over women-free billboards
Female models erased from advertisements across city after religious lobby brands the images as offensive
- guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 15 November 2011 19.16 GMT
larger | smaller
Ultra-orthodox groups have been blamed for a rising trend which has seen posters featuring women being defaced. Photograph: Baz Ratner/ReutersJerusalem's secular mayor, Nir Barkat, has pitted himself against the city's swelling ranks of ultra-orthodox extremists by demanding that local police enable women to reclaim their position in the public domain.
Over recent months, women's faces have disappeared from billboards across the city amid mounting pressure applied by the powerful ultra-orthodox lobby, who find the female image offensive.
Several advertisers have erased female models from their posters in Jerusalem. Elsewhere in Israel, the winter campaign of Israeli clothing brand Honigman features a model cosily dressed in winter knits. In the capital, the woman's head has been removed from the image, leaving just her arm and a handbag.
Companies that do not fall in line with the standards of the extreme ultra-orthodox have frequently fallen victim to direct action. Across Jerusalem, female figures have been blacked out of billboards with spray-paint, or vandalised with graffiti branding the image "illegal". Other posters are simply torn down.
On Sunday, Barkat wrote a letter to district police commander Niso Shaham in which he said: "We must make sure that those who want to advertise [with] women's images in the city can do so without fear of vandalism and defacement of billboards or buses showing women."
Police have confirmed an increase in vandalism on the borders of Jerusalem's closed ultra-orthodox neighbourhoods. Spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said police would be stepping up patrols to prevent further acts of hooliganism and ensure it is investigated.
Rosenfeld added that despite being pelted with stones, police officers made several arrests in the orthodox Meah Shearim neighbourhood last week.
But activists claim the battle over Jerusalem's billboards is only one manifestation of an alarming trend towards gender segregation across Israel driven by the religious right.
Activist Hila Benyovich-Hoffman was spurred to take action by reports that nine male cadets in the Israeli Defence Force had walked out of an army event in September because women were singing. Four were expelled from an officer's training course for refusing to apologise.
"This was the final straw for me, that these cadets could humiliate female soldiers because some rabbi has told them that a woman's voice is indecent. The army used to be a source of pride because women served alongside men as equals. But more and more, rabbis are influencing army behaviour," Benyovich-Hoffman said.
She organised a series of demonstrations last Friday in which hundreds of women gathered for "singalongs" in Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, Haifa and Beersheva to demand their right to a public presence. She says much more needs to be done.
It is not just secular Israelis that have been moved to protest. Members of the Haredi ultra-orthodox community themselves are reporting a rise in assaults on women. One orthodox website reported this week that three orthodox girls had been physically attacked in Jerusalem for dressing immodestly.
The Israeli Religious Action Centre (IRAC) was founded more than a decade ago to take on the fight against gender segregation, which is illegal in Israel. They receive around four calls a day from mostly orthodox Jewish women complaining of segregation in medical centres, on pavements, in post offices, graveyards and, most often, on buses. The centre estimates that daily, between 500 and 600 bus journeys in Israel are segregated.
"I feel like a fire fighter – this issue spreads and spirals like a fire," saids the IRAC's director Anat Hofman. "But the fact that our case load is increasing is a good thing – it means more people are sensitive to the problem and are prepared to stand up against it."
Jerusalem's deputy mayor, Naomi Tsur, admits the situation is "deplorable" but also says that women's rights have never had a better chance of flourishing in Jerusalem. For decades until November 2008, under the leadership of an orthodox mayor, billboards featuring women simply weren't allowed in the city.
Tsur said: "We are talking about a very extreme group of people who don't recognise the authority of the city, the police, the government or the high court. It is critically important that we don't let this minority dominate."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/nov/15/jerusalem-mayor-battle-orthodox-billboards
"Experiments are the only means of knowledge at our disposal. The rest is poetry, imagination." Max Planck
- Login to post comments
middle eastern monotheism and girl-hate. I wonder whether in a few hundred years secular jews won't have retreated to New York and left the believers to conduct their own affairs.
"Experiments are the only means of knowledge at our disposal. The rest is poetry, imagination." Max Planck
Religious leaders want to be the only pimps in society. So, they gots to eliminate any and all competition.
Taxation is the price we pay for failing to build a civilized society. The higher the tax level, the greater the failure. A centrally planned totalitarian state represents a complete defeat for the civilized world, while a totally voluntary society represents its ultimate success. --Mark Skousen
The sad thing is, if this sort of thing was happening in a muslim nation the press would be all over it, but because it's a nation allied with us it will likely not be brought up.
this just again goes to show how fucked up that area is, on both sides of the line. if all the secular jews were to leave israel and leave the orthodox to themselves, i can think of several things that would happen:
1. the ultra-orthodox militants and the islamist militants would finally just nuke the shit out of each other, in which case the only tear i'd shed would be for all the innocent children caught in the middle. everyone else, good riddance.
2. the ultra-orthodox wouldn't act fast enough and the islamists would massacre them, since the vast majority of jews are secular jews and there's no way the US would continue to back up israel once it is run by a pack of fringe crazies. in that case, the riddance would not be as good, but still pretty good.
3. the ultra-orthodox and the islamists would find common ground and create a state a million times worse for women and minorities (christians, druze, etc.) than iran ever thought about being.
honestly, i see the 3rd possibility happening. at least until all the women were thoroughly degraded and all the minorities wiped out. them i imagine the bullies would turn on each other.
"I have never felt comfortable around people who talk about their feelings for Jesus, or any other deity for that matter, because they are usually none too bright. . . . Or maybe 'stupid' is a better way of saying it; but I have never seen much point in getting heavy with either stupid people or Jesus freaks, just as long as they don't bother me. In a world as weird and cruel as this one we have made for ourselves, I figure anybody who can find peace and personal happiness without ripping off somebody else deserves to be left alone. They will not inherit the earth, but then neither will I. . . . And I have learned to live, as it were, with the idea that I will never find peace and happiness, either. But as long as I know there's a pretty good chance I can get my hands on either one of them every once in a while, I do the best I can between high spots."
--Hunter S. Thompson
Did anyone notice that the circle "no women" symbol had black letters with the Swastica motif shape next to it? So the way to object to what you don't like is to be a fascist yourself? That and use vandalism too boot?
For any Jew or Israeli to claim they are above superstiton and ass backward's thinking is absurd. The holy books that morons use to justify crap like this is the same Abrahamic god that Muslims use to force women to wear burkas and here in the states kept women from voting.
"We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus -- and nonbelievers."Obama
Check out my poetry here on Rational Responders Like my poetry thread on Facebook under Brian James Rational Poet, @Brianrrs37 on Twitter and my blog at www.brianjamesrationalpoet.blog
dude, brian, that's an aleph, the first letter of the hebrew alphabet, and it's not related to the swastika at all.
"I have never felt comfortable around people who talk about their feelings for Jesus, or any other deity for that matter, because they are usually none too bright. . . . Or maybe 'stupid' is a better way of saying it; but I have never seen much point in getting heavy with either stupid people or Jesus freaks, just as long as they don't bother me. In a world as weird and cruel as this one we have made for ourselves, I figure anybody who can find peace and personal happiness without ripping off somebody else deserves to be left alone. They will not inherit the earth, but then neither will I. . . . And I have learned to live, as it were, with the idea that I will never find peace and happiness, either. But as long as I know there's a pretty good chance I can get my hands on either one of them every once in a while, I do the best I can between high spots."
--Hunter S. Thompson
You STILL missed my point. I never said it was related.
Style, like the difference between cursive and block, verse Arial and Times New Roman. STYLE, not the letter or the word THE STYLE
If you put those letters next to a black Swastica they look like the same style. I am quite sure the Jews didn't intend me to interpret it like that and I know they didn't mean it like that, I was just making an observation. Much like when you see a shape in the clouds. "It looks like" is not saying "They intended it to look like".
And the other issue unrelated to my observation is that these sects of Jews are acting like fascists themselves demanding gender roles.
"We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus -- and nonbelievers."Obama
Check out my poetry here on Rational Responders Like my poetry thread on Facebook under Brian James Rational Poet, @Brianrrs37 on Twitter and my blog at www.brianjamesrationalpoet.blog
oooook, so it's a big fuckin' coincidence. jesus, man, take a fuckin' pill, not everything is a battle.
"I have never felt comfortable around people who talk about their feelings for Jesus, or any other deity for that matter, because they are usually none too bright. . . . Or maybe 'stupid' is a better way of saying it; but I have never seen much point in getting heavy with either stupid people or Jesus freaks, just as long as they don't bother me. In a world as weird and cruel as this one we have made for ourselves, I figure anybody who can find peace and personal happiness without ripping off somebody else deserves to be left alone. They will not inherit the earth, but then neither will I. . . . And I have learned to live, as it were, with the idea that I will never find peace and happiness, either. But as long as I know there's a pretty good chance I can get my hands on either one of them every once in a while, I do the best I can between high spots."
--Hunter S. Thompson
Sorry man, I wasn't making it a battle. I hope the caps didn't lead you to that thought. Not at all. Just making a clarification so you didn't think I was thinking that there was intent in how they printed that symbol, thats all.
No battle here.
"We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus -- and nonbelievers."Obama
Check out my poetry here on Rational Responders Like my poetry thread on Facebook under Brian James Rational Poet, @Brianrrs37 on Twitter and my blog at www.brianjamesrationalpoet.blog
Fascinating. I never saw this coming, but it could speed things up significantly. I always figured Israel would self destruct, but I thought it would be external forces that did the actual destruction. Now it appears that Israel may simply implode.
Enlightened Atheist, Gaming God.
no worries. it's been a long work day with an irritable baby at the end of it, so i'm a little hyper-sensitive myself.
"I have never felt comfortable around people who talk about their feelings for Jesus, or any other deity for that matter, because they are usually none too bright. . . . Or maybe 'stupid' is a better way of saying it; but I have never seen much point in getting heavy with either stupid people or Jesus freaks, just as long as they don't bother me. In a world as weird and cruel as this one we have made for ourselves, I figure anybody who can find peace and personal happiness without ripping off somebody else deserves to be left alone. They will not inherit the earth, but then neither will I. . . . And I have learned to live, as it were, with the idea that I will never find peace and happiness, either. But as long as I know there's a pretty good chance I can get my hands on either one of them every once in a while, I do the best I can between high spots."
--Hunter S. Thompson
You think you've had a bad day? I've had a bad season. I root for the Redskins.
"We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus -- and nonbelievers."Obama
Check out my poetry here on Rational Responders Like my poetry thread on Facebook under Brian James Rational Poet, @Brianrrs37 on Twitter and my blog at www.brianjamesrationalpoet.blog
That's your own fault. The Edmonton Oilers haven't won a cup since I left Edmonton in the early 90s. But you don't hear me bitching about it.
much...
Enlightened Atheist, Gaming God.
it does and they aren't
'It appeareth in nothing more, that atheism is rather in the lip than in the heart of man, than by this: that atheists will ever be talking of that their opinion, as if they fainted it within themselves and would be glad to be strengthened by the consent of others.' Francis Bacon.