The article, “Growing Segregation by Sex in Israel Raises Fears for Women’s Rights” by The New York Times, reports on the increasing incidents of sex segregation in public transportation, education, health care and other arenas in Israel, driven by the ultra-Orthodox and far-right parties in Netanyahu’s new coalition government. It cites examples of women being denied access to train cars, buses, classrooms, clinics and even cemeteries by men who claim religious authority or tradition.
The article warns that the growing influence of the ultra-Orthodox and far-right parties could undermine the secular character of the state and threaten the civil liberties of all Israelis. Ultra-Orthodox members of Netanyahu’s far-right coalition want to expand the powers of all-male rabbinical courts, and to bar women and men from mixing in many public arenas.
Roni Caryn Rabin writes about a recent incident. “The trains from Tel Aviv were packed one evening last month when Inbal Boxerman, a 40-year-old mother of two, was blocked by a wall of men as she tried to board. One of them told her that women were not allowed on — the car was for men only.”
This was not an isolated incident, as even though the Supreme Court ruled that segregated seating is against the law, it is quickly becoming the de facto practice all over Israel.
Women are being forced “to sit in separate sections on buses and trains, ultra-Orthodox women customarily board buses in their neighborhoods through the rear door and sit in the back.”
Bus drivers in central Tel Aviv and southern Eilat have refused to pick up young women, because they were wearing crop tops or workout clothes. Last month, ultra-Orthodox men in the religious town of Bnei Brak stopped a public bus and blocked the road because a woman was driving.
Women dressed as “handmaids,” a reference to Margaret Atwood’s dystopian novel, The Handmaid’s Tale, in which women are enslaved to a theocratic male elite, have been protesting all over the country.
Measures as repressive as these are routinely condemned by the US in Muslim countries as violations of human and civil rights of its citizens, but apparently, in Israel they are acceptable, even though they violate their own 1948 declaration of independence that guaranteed equal rights for all.
According to the global gender gap report issued by the World Economic Forum Israel is now ranked below Pakistan, at 96, for women’s political empowerment. Is there a more revealing statistic to illustrate women’s perilous position in that country?
The New Yorker notes that thirty-two of Netanyahu’s new coalition government and sixty-four members in the Knesset (out of a hundred and twenty parliamentary seats) are disciples of so-called religious parties, the political arms of theocratic communities. These parties, and factions of parties, can be divided into three groups, and while their focus might be either more or less on the politics of territorial expansion, all 3 factions are “moving the state further toward Orthodox law”–a theocracy.
Some of Netanyahu’s policies have directly affected women’s rights, such as restricting access to abortion, promoting gender segregation in public spaces, and excluding women from religious and political leadership roles.
Indeed, it is not a stretch to imagine that if Israel were not a friendly satellite state of the US, the American government might be calling it a terrorist state that oppresses minorities such as Palestinians and women.
The UN General Assembly has passed more resolutions critical of Israel than any other country in the world. In 2020 alone, it adopted 17 anti-Israel resolutions, compared to six for the rest of the world combined. The US has blocked such resolutions that condemn Israel for its various human rights violations.
But women’s rights in Israel have been under threat by the current right-wing government, which has reduced the representation of women in the parliament and the cabinet, and has proposed to expand the power of state-run religious courts that are patriarchal and biased. According to feminist groups, these changes could permanently erode the legal status and autonomy of women, especially in matters of divorce, inheritance, and civil disputes.
This intensifying hostility towards women’s rights should come as no surprise, as Israel has been experiencing a steady shift to the right in its political landscape, sliding ever more surely towards a theocracy. According to various polls and studies, a large majority of Jewish Israelis between 18 and 24 identify as right-wing; they constitute the future of the political landscape in Israel and should be a serious cause for concern for democracy.
For Netanyahu to successfully form a coalition, he made several concessions. Among them, proposals to segregate audiences by sex, to create new religious residential communities, to allow businesses to refuse to provide services based on religious beliefs, and to expand the powers of all-male rabbinical courts.
In short, Netanyahu made a cynical bargain with the ultra right, sacrificing women’s rights in order for him to stay in power.
