Time
to Extend Israeli Law to Meah Shearim
by
Naomi Ragen (16 July 2009)
A woman is caught on tape detaching the feeding tube from her starving
three-year old in Hadassah Hospital, after years of bringing the child in with
unexplained medical conditions and bodily injuries. She is arrested by
authorities for child endangerment and jailed. In response, her community backs
her up, burns property and assaults police and social workers.
This story makes no sense until you add that the woman is haredi, a member of
Neturei Karta sect in Jerusalem's Meah Shearim.
As citizens of Israel look on in astonishment today as the streets of its
capital are set on fire and innocent passersby are subject to a pogrom of stones
and curses, we long-time inhabitants of Jerusalem are not surprised.
For years, police and government authorities have treated Meah
Shearim, the hotbed of virulent haredi anti-Israel provocations, as the French
have treated the Arab suburbs of Paris, the banlieues: as a separate country,
afraid to engage with its inhabitants, to enforce the laws of the nation.
It is a no-go zone, where citizens take the law into their hands,
and inhabitants are subject to mob rule.
I saw this personally when I was writing my play Women's Minyan, which was based
on the following true story: A haredi woman in Meah Shearim, mother of 12, found
out her sexually abusive husband was having an affair with a married woman. When
she finally stopped covering for him, and demanded he move out and give her a
divorce, she found herself not only thrown out of the house, but attacked by
armed haredi thugs who arrived at her doorstep. Not
finding her at home, they put her friend into the hospital. When she asked for
child custody in the Rabbinical Courts, the Meah Shearim trained rabbinical
judges colluded to ban her from any contact with her children
forever. We took this case to Israel's Supreme Court, which turned out to
be absolutely spineless, sending it back to the Rabbinical Courts until the
mother gave up in despair.
Members of Neturei Karta have actively befriended people like Arafat and
Achmadinijad. The fact that they live in this country and don't send their
children abroad (not true by the way) as one haredi apologist asserted today on
television, doesn't make them loyal citizens.
For years, Israel society has allowed Meah Shearim - like Tul Karem and
Ramallah-- to be off limits to Israeli law. If Israel authorities had asserted
the law of the land on thugs who call themselves modesty patrols, perhaps the
streets wouldn't be burning today. If municipal authorities had torn down the
signs warning women what they can and can't wear on city streets, if the
Ministry of Transportation had not given haredi thugs license to harass women
passengers on public buses by caving in to absurd demands for "mehadrin" bus
lines where women are forced to sit in the back, we wouldn't be seeing these
riots today. If the police would be willing to aggressively investigate and
prosecute child abusers and sexual predators and rapists hiding behind black
clothes in dark corners of this city, where citizens are afraid to report abuse
for fear of becoming targets of haredi thug patrols, we wouldn't be seeing this
today. And if the Education Ministry would extend the laws of compulsory
education and the basic curriculum to schools in Meah Shearim, we wouldn't be
seeing this today.
The time has come to say there is only one Jewish State, with one set of laws
and rules of behavior for all its citizens. There are no banlieues, no no-go
zones. All Israel's citizens need to be subject to the same laws and
penalties, the same obligations. Whether the crimes they commit are in the
name of Hashem or the name of Allah.
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