How do you know when the theocrats are winning? Women start to disappear, and at the same time, the ones who haven’t disappeared yet are subject to spittle-flecked hatred…including those who are six years old.
Like that. Posters that feature women have been “defaced” in Jerusalem, the SMH article says, and by defaced it means defaced, as you can see. That poster says, “You think you’re pretty, bitch? I’ll give you pretty, you whore. How pretty do you think you’ll be after I stick a razor in your eyes, you cunt?”
That’s not “segregation”; it’s not “modesty”; it’s not “religious obligations”; it’s just loathing.
”Shut your filthy mouth, bitch.”
Not content with segregated streets, queues and buses, extremist members of the Haredi have turned their attention to the city of Bet Shemesh, 30 kilometres to the west of Jerusalem.
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.
That’s how you know when theocracy is winning – when men start calling little girls prostitutes. In public. Outside a school. At girls on their way to school.
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BenSix
November 19, 2011 at 4:16 pm (UTC -7) Link to this comment
Hah! Solidarity.
I’d wondered why the place has such a high birth rate. These guys are having twice as many kids as even Israel’s Muslims.
WMDKitty
November 19, 2011 at 5:34 pm (UTC -7) Link to this comment
Fucking. Ridiculous.
Josh Slocum
November 19, 2011 at 5:58 pm (UTC -7) Link to this comment
It’s just as Ophelia says – it’s such brazen violence. I’ll cut your eyes and mouth up, bitch. Shudder.
JennieL
November 19, 2011 at 6:31 pm (UTC -7) Link to this comment
It’s quite frightening to contemplate what must be going on in their minds – or, more to the point, what must be prevented at all costs from going through those minds. You know, empathy, respect, . . . actually anything that isn’t unthinking hatred, hostility and self-righteousness.
I really want to say something intelligent to this, but it’s really hard to say anything that hasn’t already been said much more eloquently.
And thinking that it can’t get worse seems somehow to manifest itself to fundamentalists as a double-dog-dare.
Francisco Bacopa
November 19, 2011 at 8:54 pm (UTC -7) Link to this comment
I agree with you about the implied message in th first defaced poster. However, if you hadn’t told me it had been defaced, I would have thought it another weird example of the strange images in high fashion that sometimes suggest a woman has been battered.
Carlie
November 20, 2011 at 3:49 pm (UTC -7) Link to this comment
Francisco – most people find those fashion images appalling, too.
happiestsadist
November 20, 2011 at 4:31 pm (UTC -7) Link to this comment
And the fundies here want to make things the same.
jolo5309
November 21, 2011 at 6:44 am (UTC -7) Link to this comment
And because of the way government works in Israel, they punch above their weight politically. The ultra orthodox control about half a dozen seats in their parliament, enough to keep the party in power and gives them (the ultra orthodox) the ability to get away with building new settlements.
Raging Bee
November 21, 2011 at 8:30 am (UTC -7) Link to this comment
And we’re funding the government that gives so much power to such bigots? The US-Israel alliance has become an alliance of Christian and Jewish right-wing extremists, with non-extremists like us being their common enemy.
Erasing Women: On Haredi Judaism’s Influence in Israel « The Eternal Bookshelf
December 9, 2011 at 5:16 pm (UTC -7) Link to this comment
[...] found Pollard’s article via an entry by Ophelia Benson at Butterflies and Wheels.[2] Much thanks to her for writing about the way women are treated in [...]