Knesset Committee for the Status of Women chairwoman Tzipi Hotovely (Likud) boarded a "mehadrin" segregated bus line in order to protest the exclusion of women in the public sphere Thursday morning. The female MK sat in the front of the bus, on which women are asked to sit in the back. Some of the haredim who boarded the bus sat in the back while others didn't board at all.
Hotovely described the action as part of a larger struggle over the basic principals of the state. "We cannot let certain groups to live in a de facto autonomous state inside the State of Israel," she said.
The decision to ride on the segregated buses, she added, "is an inseparable part of elected officials' obligation to be acquainted with reality, so that they can act to change it."
“Mehadrin” lines are those used mostly by haredi [ultra-orthodox] passengers, in which women are asked to sit at the back of the bus, and sometimes even enter the bus only from its back door. It is illegal for bus companies to enforce this rule, but passengers may voluntarily sit according to gender.
Hotovely also plans to visit the Beit Orot School in Beit Shemesh, which has been the center of controversy since it opened in September. Hotovely will be joined by MK Uri Orbach (Habayit Hayehudi) and MK Shlomo Molla (Kadima).
Also Thursday, police charged a 44-year-old haredi man who was arrested Wednesday for yelling “whore!” at a female soldier on an Egged bus, the latest in a series of incidents of discrimination against women in ultra-Orthodox areas. According to police, the soldier was sitting towards the front of Bus Line 49, which runs from Neve Yaakov through Ramat Eshkol towards the haredi Sanhedria neighborhood.
Shlomo Fox, 44, was charged with sexual harassment.
Fox asked the soldier to move to the back of the bus, and called her a whore. The soldier reportedly refused to move, and when the man continued to harass her to force her to move to the back of the bus, the bus driver called the police. The man was arrested and removed from the bus, which continued on its route.
Because it serves primarily religious neighborhoods, the bus in one of the lines which is considered “de facto mehadrin” meaning men sit in the front and women sit in the back.
In January, the Supreme Court accepted the recommendations of the Transportation Ministry that seating on Egged buses be completely voluntary. The passengers may decide to sit separately according to gender, but it is illegal for any of the passengers to try to force someone to sit in any specific part of the bus.
Lahav Harkov, Melanie Lidman and Tamara Zieve contributed to this report.
