I've written many times about the growing problem of radical extremism among some groups of Orthodox Jews in Israel. The problem has also received increased attention in Israel as well, though until recently it seems that the government has tried to ignore it and thus has allowed it to fester.
Now, though, the attacks on little girls walking to school has produced enough negative media attention and national outrage that the government has been forced to act. It's a shame that reports of grown men spitting on an 8-year-old girl, making her cry and afraid to walk to school, are what it takes to force a government to do its duty.
Ynet reported that [Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu] "asked Internal Security Minister Yitzhak Aharonovitch on Saturday to instruct the police to act firmly against violent attacks targeting women in the public sphere." In the aftermath of the Channel 2 story and the reaction, the ultra-Orthodox mayor of Beit Shemesh ordered workers took down street signs that directed women to cross the street and "not linger" in front of a synagogue. As they did so, Haredim threw rocks and called the municipal workers 'Nazis.'
Source: The Forward
Governments in secular, democratic, free societies have an obligation to protect people in public spaces. It never should have come to this -- no matter what free speech and free assembly rights people have, those rights don't extend to the sort of harassment they are inflicting on children. Public spaces belong to each of us equally and cannot be taken over by bullies willing to be loud, obnoxious, abusive, and/or violent.
So why did the Israeli government wait so long to do anything at all? Why has it taken outrage across the nation to get the government to start doing something that should have been done right from the beginning? I think one reason is that Israel is having trouble maintaining its identity as a secular, democratic state.
This problem is inherent in Israel itself because it wasn't to define itself as a "Jewish" state while also being a western-style democratic state. And who gets to define what is "Jewish"? That's part of the problem. This power lies more with conservative and orthodox sects.
Even worse, the most extremely conservative and radical orthodox sects wield a disproportionate amount of political power in the Israeli parliament. Just about every government has had to make deals with these groups in order to exist, making it harder for any government to crack down on even the most outrageous and egregious behavior of extremist Jews.
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