Extremists Excluding Women

Lest there be any who may think that it is only Islamists who verge on the fanatical, with some among them steeply progressing from fanatically obsessed to maniacally extremist, they may wish to alter their perceptions, just a tad. There are, after all, Hindu extremists and Buddhist extremists who insist that the world recognize their warped and stringent view of the divine in a need to victimize and oppress.

And then there are also, unfortunately, the ultra-orthodox Jews who do their best to surpass all others in their urgent extremism that holds the certainty that women are nefarious creatures sent to mankind as a test from God to measure man's goodness; women who are in reality promiscuous temptresses who must be kept at bay and out of sight. They could perhaps, match wits with the Taliban.

It has finally dawned upon secular and reasonable-religious Jews that they have living amongst them warped religious minds who insist on subjecting women to the scorn and misery they deserve in having had the misfortune to be born female, an accursed, inferior gender. Necessary for the perpetuation of the species, but requiring separation from men lest they defile them.

Jewish extremists in Jerusalem neighbourhoods like Beit Shemesh, consider it their religious duty to accost schoolgirls wearing the school uniforms designed specifically for the orthodox in attendance at an orthodox school, but which dress code the extremists find to be unsuitable. The long skirts and long-sleeved shirts, mark these second-grade students as "prostitutes".

And eight-year-old children are accosted by these wild lunatics purporting to represent the pure will of God, who spit upon the girls and rain invective down upon them, cursing and threatening them. "My stomach hurts every time I need to walk to and from the school and I know those men will be there. They are scary", said one child whose daily school-walk ordeal had been video-taped.

None but the obsessed ultra-orthodox are Jewish enough; even those who are of the Orthodox Jewish camp are considered to be unfit to call themselves Jews, to these madmen. Now, finally, ordinary Israelis, proud to be Jews, proud of their Israeli citizenship, content to represent the majority, but appalled at the lunacy in their midst, are joining together to protest the extremists.

The police are pelted by stones and spat upon by the extremists when they take down signage ordering women off the streets, and order them to sit at the back of buses, segregating them from the men. It is time and past time for these extremists to be dealt with in a manner which signifies just how criminally disruptive they are to society, and what a blemish they represent upon the nation's conscience.

"We are fighting for the soul of the nation and the essence of the state. Today is a test in which the entire nation will have to mobilize to rescue the majority from the claws of a small minority that is chipping away at our most hallowed values." The words ring out in a concerned despair at the depth of the depravity of the extremists. President Shimon Peres fully understands how critical this issue is.

"The police kept coming, and the sign would just get put back up as soon as they left. We need a real change here, not just some superficial efforts to take down signs."