Quote:Imagine a world where all photographs of women and girls - on posters, advertising material, buses, billboards and shop windows - gradually disappear from public view; where supermarket lines are segregated and men and women sit in different sections of public transport: men at the front, women at the back.
Is it a Muslim "ghetto"?
No, it's Jerusalem, where the Ultra-Orthodox Jews now outnumber other Jews:
Quote:Here, Jewish girls as young as six, wearing a conservative uniform of skirts below the knee and shirts to the elbow, are being targeted by the Haredi, called ''pritzas'' (prostitutes) for being ''immodestly dressed'' as they walk into Orot girls school, a state-funded religious-nationalist school. The Haredi are demanding the girls cover up. And, it doesn't end there. Fresh from their fight last month to segregate an entire street in the ultra-Orthodox Jerusalem neighbourhood of Mea Sharim during the religious celebration of Sukkot - the Haredi have set their sights on billboards and other advertising material that feature images of women.
So far the ultra-Orthodox have managed to ensure a public health campaign to attract organ donors only uses pictures of men, while an insurance company has removed images of girls from its child health promotional material.
Speaking to Israel's Army Radio about his company's organ donor advertisements, Ohad Gibli, deputy director of marketing for the Canaan advertising agency, said: ''We have learned that an ad campaign in Jerusalem and Bnei Brak that includes pictures of women will remain up for hours at best, and in other cases, will lead to the vandalisation and torching of buses.''
Indeed, as Chief Justice Dorit Beinisch was quoted as saying during a September High Court hearing over the segregation of the Mea Sharim street, gender segregation ''began with buses, continued with supermarkets and reached the streets. It's not going away, just the opposite.''
Orot girls school may be the focus of battle between Jews in Bet Shemesh but it is also a reflection of a wider battle across Israel between the the ultra-orthodox on one side and and the religious nationalist and secular Jews on the other.
Last week Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat publicly intervened in the growing dispute over the display of women's images, writing a letter to Police Commander Niso Shaham stating: ''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.''
On November 11, hundreds of demonstrators gathered in Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, Haifa and Beersheba to sing in protest at the Haredi stance against women and an incident at an Israel Defence Forces event, where four ultra-Orthodox male cadets left a function because women were singing.
Describing itself as a ''society of scholars'', the Haredi community is one of the fastest growing in Israel. A November 2010 report by Haifa University demographers, Arnon Soffer and Evgenia Bystrov, estimates 30 per cent of all Jewish newborns in Israel are Haredi, while government statistics predict that by 2025 the Haredim will have jumped from 9 per cent of the population to 15 per cent.
Tensions are also exacerbated by the fact that, in a country that has compulsory military service for men and women, most Haredi do not serve in the military.
And because of their focus on religious study, most Haredi men do not work, relying instead on social welfare provided by the government, or the income earned by their wives, who also give birth to large numbers of children, often up to eight or nine per family.
Meanwhile, many extreme Haredi do not recognise the authority of the government, the police or the courts, and describe themselves as ''anti-Zionist'' - they are against anything that is privileged over the Torah.
Tamar El Or, a professor of anthropology and sociology at the Hebrew University has lived with Haredi families as part of her research into the community. For many years, she says, they felt as if their communities were marginalised, that they were living on the fringe of the Zionist project. Now all that has changed.
''They feel very safe and at home in Jerusalem,'' Professor El Or says. ''When you walk through the streets of Jerusalem you can feel that the majority of the public looks either ultra-Orthodox or Zionist orthodox, and if you want to find the non-orthodox cultural sites, the non-Kosher restaurants, you now have to make extra effort.
''The balance has tipped, and the non-orthodox people in Jerusalem are the minority, not just on the numbers, but on the cultural feeling, the atmosphere.''
Meanwhile, Jerusalem women are fighting back with a guerrilla campaign of their own - having their photographs taken and hanging them from buildings throughout the city with the slogan ''returning women to Jerusalem billboards''.
''Many of these women are modern, Orthodox women who care about the religion and know that it is possible to live a full religious life without these social restrictions, without also stepping outside beliefs or morals,'' Professor El Or says. ''They believe in religious life as well as gender equality.''
Read the rest here...So, where is the outcry against this religion's treatment of women? Don't you just love the inconsistency of the bigots?