A Palestinian Olympic State

The International Olympic Committee (IOC), headed by Jacques Rogge, an orthopedic surgeon from Belgium, has unilaterally created a Palestinian State,and allowed it to compete under its own flag in this year’s Olympic games.

Not only that, but “Palestinian athletes”, according to a CNN report, which thought it was just wonderful, don’t have to qualify like everyone else to compete in events!

Given that the last time so-called Palestinians — claiming not to have a country–participated in their own name in the Olympics they did so by murdering Olympic athletes, I would say that the entire International Olympic Committee ( IOC) has disgraced itself by failing its mission, i.e. “… to promote top-level sport as well as sport for all in accordance with the Olympic Charter…[to] ensure the regular celebration of the Olympic Games and strongly encourage, by appropriate means, the …

…continue reading A Palestinian Olympic State

Egged and the Taliban

I can’t remember the last time I took a bus in Jerusalem.

But Monday morning, in the throes of a new exercise regimen, I found myself walking down Strauss Street and, as luck would have it, the number 40 bus stopped right in front of me. It’s the bus with the shortest route to my home in Ramot, a neighborhood divided between secular, modern Orthodox, and haredi inhabitants.

The bus was empty when I got on. Completely empty. So I paid my fare, got my receipt, and chose a single seat near the front.

I was happily immersed in an article about Yaddo in Vanity Fair when I was interrupted by an angry haredi man who announced that I needed to move to the back of the bus. I looked up at him, astonished, feeling a flash of what Blacks …

…continue reading Egged and the Taliban

Naomi Ragen is an American-born novelist, playwright and journalist who has lived in Jerusalem since 1971 and who writes regularly to her mailing list about Israel and Jewish issues. Naomi has published eight internationally best selling novels, and is the author of a hit play (Women's Minyan) which has been performed more than 500 times in Israel's National Theatre (Habimah) as well as in the United States and Argentina. She is a tireless advocate for women's rights in Israel, campaigning against gender segregation on Israeli buses and bias in rabbinical courts.


Naomi is a sought-after lecturer all over the world. If your group is interested in hosting Naomi, please click here.
Women to the Back of the Bus!!
I Am Not Sitting in the Back of the Bus (published in the Jewish Chronicle on 23 Feb 2007) - Why, together with other women, I filed suit to put an end to the primitive and degrading gender-segregated bus lines now popping up all over Israel.

Read my original article about how I was attacked by a religious fanatic because I refused to move to the back (the "women's section") of a Jerusalem bus.

Read about an American woman beaten because she refused to move to the back of a Jerusalem bus.

Read my article explaining why segregated buses are just the latest crazy idea of fanatics with too much free time on their hands.

Read about haredi women who want to sit with their families and don't want to be forced to crowd together in the back of the bus.

Israel Bus Rule Sparks Religious Row - How the liberal western media perceive all this fanaticism.

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