“A shy 8-year-old schoolgirl has unwittingly found herself on the front line of Israel’s latest religious war.
Naama Margolese is a ponytailed, bespectacled second-grader who is afraid of walking to her religious Jewish girls school for fear of ultra-Orthodox extremists who have spat on her and called her a whore for dressing “immodestly.“
Her plight has drawn new attention to the simmering issue of religious coercion in Israel, and the increasing brazenness of extremists in the insular ultra-Orthodox Jewish community.
“When I walk to school in the morning I used to get a tummy ache because I was so scared … that they were going to stand and start yelling and spitting,” the pale, blue-eyed girl said softly in an interview with The Associated Press Monday. “They were scary. They don’t want us to go to the school.”
The girls school that Naama attends in the city of Beit Shemesh, to the west of Jerusalem, is on the border between an ultra-Orthodox neighborhood and a community of modern Orthodox Jewish residents, many of them American immigrants.
The ultra-Orthodox consider the school, which moved to its present site at the beginning of the school year, an encroachment on their territory. Dozens of black-hatted men jeer and physically accost the girls almost daily, claiming their very presence is a provocation.
Beit Shemesh has long experienced friction between the ultra-Orthodox, who make up about half the city’s population, and other residents. And residents say the attacks at the girls’ school, attended by about 400 students, have been going on for months. Last week, after a local TV channel reported about the school and interviewed Naama’s family, a national uproar ensued.
….
Hadassa Margolese, Naama’s 30-year-old Chicago-born mother, an Orthodox Jew who covers her hair and wears long sleeves and a long skirt, says, “It shouldn’t matter what I look like. Someone should be allowed to walk around in sleeveless shirts and pants and not be harassed.”
Read the full CBS news article and read more in the Jerusalem Post and New York Times.
I applaud Naama and her mother for speaking out against the harassers and against street harassment in general. I hate that harassment happens period but I am OUTRAGED when it happens to kids and teenagers, especially when the harassers are grown men. They are bullies.
I also applaud the police for taking action:
“Police Commissioner Insp.-Gen. Yohanan Danino ordered his commanders and officers to enforce a zero-tolerance policy toward discrimination against women. According to guidelines sent by Danino to police commanders, any form of this discrimination must be treated as a criminal offense or a public disorder incident. Danino accompanied the orders with a condemnation of the phenomenon, describing “any attempt to harm the rights of women” as unacceptable.”
This story illustrates how street harassment can intersect with other forms of discrimination or conflict, such as religion. It also shows how the targets and purpose of the harassment are the same worldwide: the harassers target girls or women in public places just because they are girls or women in public places and then they shame them/threaten them/scaring them/humiliate them.
Thanks to the large number of harassers worldwide, public places are less safe and less welcoming for girls and women everywhere, including for 8-year-old girls. That is not okay.
Is street harassment starting before puberty really the future we want for the next generation of girls?
If we don’t do something, that is their future.
Hollaback Israel is fighting street harassment in Israel. Find ideas for how you can help end street harassment in your community. Join us in speaking out against street harassment during March 18-24, 2012, International Anti-Street Harassment Week.
