Rosa Parks in Jerusalem

All who read my blog know I am a friend of Israel. There are a handful of Jews, though, that I need to take issue with. According to Haaretz.com:

A woman who reported a vicious attack by an ad-hoc "modesty patrol" on a Jerusalem bus last month is now lining up support for her case and may be included in a petition to the High Court of Justice over the legality of sex-segregated buses.

Miriam Shear says she was traveling to pray at the Western Wall in Jerusalem's Old City early on November 24 when a group of ultra-Orthodox (Haredi) men attacked her for refusing to move to the back of the Egged No. 2 bus. She is now in touch with several legal advocacy and women's organizations, and at the same time, waiting for the police to apprehend her attackers.

In her first interview since the incident, Shear says that on the bus three weeks ago, she was slapped, kicked, punched and pushed by a group of men who demanded that she sit in the back of the bus with the other women. The bus driver, in response to a media inquiry, denied that violence was used against her, but Shear's account has been substantiated by an unrelated eyewitness on the bus who confirmed that she sustained an unprovoked "severe beating."

Apparently there are some Orthodox groups that don't think men and woman should sit in the same section on the bus. First, I think it is ridiculous. Second, if they really feel this is the way to go I do not understand why they do not let the women sit in the front while the men sit in the back. Women are man's crowning jewel and are to be treated with respect. Here they are treating women like yesterday's trash by making them go to the back of the bus. Well, Miriam Shear refused to be treated like trash and refused to move:

"Every two or three days, someone would tell me to sit in the back, sometimes politely and sometimes not," she recalled this week in a telephone interview. "I was always polite and said 'No. This is not a synagogue. I am not going to sit in the back.'"

But Shear, a 50-year-old religious woman, says that on the morning of the 24th, a man got onto the bus and demanded her seat - even though there were a number of other seats available in the front of the bus.

"I said, I'm not moving and he said, 'I'm not asking you, I'm telling you.' Then he spat in my face and at that point, I was in high adrenaline mode and called him a son-of-a-bitch, which I am not proud of. Then I spat back. At that point, he pushed me down and people on the bus were screaming that I was crazy. Four men surrounded me and slapped my face, punched me in the chest, pulled at my clothes, beat me, kicked me. My snood [hair covering] came off. I was fighting back and kicked one of the men in his privates. I will never forget the look on his face."

Shear says that when she bent down in the aisle to retrieve her hair covering, "one of the men kicked me in the face. Thank God he missed my eye. I got up and punched him. I said, 'I want my hair covering back' but he wouldn't give it to me, so I took his black hat and threw it in the aisle."

What a bunch of animals. Supposedly they make the rule in the name of God, yet they think God is pleased with this savage treatment of a woman? I am proud of this woman for standing her ground and not subjecting herself to being treated like a second-class citizen. She is like Rosa Parks, who refused to go to the back of the bus just because she was black. I love it that she was able to get a clear shot in the privates. I hope her efforts start a dominoe effect for better treatment of women all across the Middle-East.