Israeli Women Fight Back-Of-Bus Status

This video is called FRANCE 24 Report: Israel: sexist segregation on the bus.

Israeli Women Fight Back-Of-Bus Status

Run Date: 05/13/07

By Brenda Gazzar
WeNews correspondent

Five women in Israel are going to court to protest the way sex-segregated public buses are run in Israel.

The arrangement serves the beliefs of ultra-Orthodox passengers but the women say it discriminates against other riders.

JERUSALEM, Israel –Naomi Regan says she wasn’t trying to start a revolution when she refused more than two years ago to give up her seat in the front of a public bus to a man who insisted she move to the back.

The New York-born writer unknowingly boarded a sex-segregated bus line that caters to ultra-Orthodox riders.

On these special lines women sit in the back, are expected to wear modest clothing and usually enter through the rear doors.

Regan says that after she chose a seat in the front, a large Haredi gentleman leaned over her “in a threatening manner,” told her to “get up and get back to the back of the bus,” then cursed at her and yelled “at the top of his lungs” when she refused to budge.

Regan stayed put, she said, but endured a “constant barrage of verbal insults and physical intimidation” during her bus ride home.

Many in the ultra-Orthodox community prefer to sit in these special buses when available to avoid being in close proximity or contact with members of the opposite sex in accordance with religious custom.

“It has nothing to do with Judaism. It is a desecration of God’s name,” argues Regan, 57, who lives in Israel and describes herself as a modern Orthodox Jew.