Bus Number 2

By Miriam Shear
December,2006


Dear Naomi:

For the past 5 weeks, I have been waking up at 3:50 a.m. to catch the # 2 bus out of Har Nof to the Kotel.  I enjoy davening by the neitz at the Kotel HaKatan in the Moslem quarter.  It is peaceful, quiet, and yes, even though I am totally alone - it IS safe.  I have never been bothered by the Arabs there in that area.

On several occasions, both men and women have stopped by my seat and asked me to move to the back of the bus.  I have politely - and firmly - refused this "invitation" .  This is not a Mehadrin bus and there are no signs indicating that it is.  It is, rather, the arbitrary decision reached without due process by a group that claims it is "the majority" to render the # 2 bus a Mehadrin bus.  I checked with Egged - it is not.
 
After a few weeks, other women decided that they, too, do not enjoy sitting in the back and sat down next to me or behind me.  These women were verbally bullied by the other passengers to move to the back.  All of them caved.  However, 1 woman who had been literally picked up by 2 other women and moved to the back of the bus, came back a few days later, took a seat behind me and adamantly refused to move when beckoned to move to the back.  Another woman later sat next to her but moved when other women loudly demanded that she moved.  In the meantime, they were leaving me alone and I became somewhat confident that they would continue to leave me alone.  But . . . .

Last Friday morning, November 24th, I took my makom kavua on the bus and did my usual thing of just looking out the window.  A few stops later, a man who is regularly on this bus, stopped at my seat and said, "I want to sit here.  Please move to the back of the bus".  I smiled and said, "I'm sorry, I'm not moving but there are 2 seats in front of me, 1 across the aisle - you can sit there".  He refused and demanded MY seat.  I was somewhat amused at this childish and arrogant behavior but told him again, politely and quietly, that I am not moving and that if he really, really wants to sit here, he could even sit in the empty seat next to me.  But - I'm not moving.  This man stared at me for about 10 straight seconds and then spat in my face.  Without missing a beat, I jumped up, called him a son-of-a-bitch, and spat back at him.  This brought screams from the women calling me a crazy woman.  He responded to my response with a push in the face and a punch to the breasts that sent me flying on to the floor.  I jumped up and punched him back.  At this point, no fewer than 4 other men jumped up - not to defend ME - but to ATTACK me by punching, hitting, slapping, and kicking me to the floor.  I was fighting back the whole time but was no match for 4 men in such cramped quarters.  I finally got enough aim to kick one man in the privates and he went limping back to his seat in unmistakable agony.  (Yes, I DO smile every time I think about it in the aftermath).  But, in the meantime, the "holy" man sat in my seat and had discarded my bag onto the middle of the aisle.  I went after him again, demanding my seat back.  He spat at me which evoked the same response from me.  My snood had come off my head during this scuffle so I knelt down to the floor to find it and the "holy" man kicked me in the face.  The kick was so strong that the dirty outline of his shoe could be seen on my right cheek.  Within a short amount of time my cheek began to swell and it took no less that 4 Ibuprofens over Shabbos to keep the swelling and the pain down.  At the time of the kick, however, I felt no pain - only rage, equally distributed between the Chillul Hashem and the perversion of what some of these Chareidim call "kedusha".  I kicked him back, grabbed his black hat and threw it down the aisle.  It was handed back up to him but I grabbed it again, turned it upside down and spat into it.  It was grabbed from me and I yelled that he would not get his hat back until I got my snood back.  Someone passed up a knitted beret, I said "Todah", and put it on my head.  I went back to demanding my seat back but he stared straight ahead, refusing to move.  He was being protected by one particular man who held both poles between the seats to block my access.
 
By this time you are most likely asking:  What was the bus driver doing during all this?  What about the other passengers?  Answer:  NOTHING!!!!  Other than 4 men protecting him by beating, kicking, punching, slapping me - not one person on the bus came to my assistance.  In fact, the women were screaming at me that this was MY fault because "you don't know your place, you stupid American".  The wheels on the bus kept rolling along as the bus driver never once stopped the bus or got on his PA to demand order.     

HOWEVER - almost immediately after the initial spitting, kicking, and punching, 2 men - both secular and whom I've never seen on that bus before - got on the bus with 2 large video cameras and filmed the "activities" .

While catching my breath and regaining my strength, I looked around at me and saw men sitting there with their noses in their siddurim as if a woman being beaten and kicked was normal.  I began yelling at them:  "Is this the Chareidi way of life???  How can you sit there with your noses in your siddurim while a Jewish woman is being beaten and kicked and spat in the face???  Do you think your tefillahs are being answered while you sit there and DO NOTHING????! !!  Your tefillahs are being flushed bittul - how can you stand before the Ribbono Shel Olam at the Kotel this morning and expect that Hashem will hear you????  What is wrong with you people???"  And then, I turned to the women:  "And - you women! - you let a Jewish woman be treated this way and you say and do NOTHING - ABSOLUTLEY NOTHING! - to help her?  Last week it was your trash cans they burned, soon it will be your homes and then it will be you.  These men will treat you worse than the Arabs treat their wives and daughters - You are MAKING A HUGE MISTAKE!!!  What are you worried about - that if you speak up your daughter won't get a shidduch???  Well - you've perverted the whole thing.  If you are wiling to condone this then you will get everything you deserve.  You are just as bad as this rasha is!"  I then told all of them - men and women - that they could take their Torah learning and their tefillahs and flush them down the toilet because they have learned NOTHING - ABSOLUTLEY NOTHING - and they are a perversion to everything that is kadosh.  Note:  During the entire time I was being blocked in the human cage of 4 men, these holy men were pressed against every part of my body.  I taunted them asking - "Ah - so this is more tzniut than me sitting there?  Or is this really what you all wanted?"  One of them actually replied:  "Yes, this is more tzniut".
 
As we approached the Old City, I whispered to one of the camera men to get me the police.  As one of them attempted to get off, he was blocked by the men and several of the men yelled at him in Hebrew to not get the police.  He backed away.  However, when we got off the bus, I attempted to stay with the "holy man" who was cowardly trying to avoid me.  I began yelling at the top of my lungs for the police, ran through security and a soldier and police man came and detained him.  At this point a bunch of women came up to the police and the soldier and loudly started telling them that this was all my fault, that I had started it by refusing to move to the back of the bus.  (Yes, I know, the Kafkaesque nature of it does not elude me either).  However, the police and the soldier weren't buying it and demanded that this man wait while they went to get a supervisor.  While waiting, an American woman came up to me and calmly asked me, "Why is it so important to you to sit there?  We are the majority - we have decided that we want a separate seating bus."  I calmly responded:  "Why is it so important to you that I NOT sit there?  And who says you are the majority?  If you are, then why not use the 2 choices available to you:  1)  Petition Egged to make this a Mehadrin bus, or 2) Get your own private hasa'a.  But until you succeed in doing either, this is a public bus and anybody can sit wherever they want.  Now, let me ask you, is there really more kedusha in men beating, kicking, and spitting at a woman because she won't give up her seat?"  She never responded, she just looked down, shrugged, and walked away.

While waiting for the supervisor, several of the "holy" man's friends surrounded him and quickly ran with him escorting him to the tunnel in the men's section of the Kotel.  I would not go into the men's section of the Kotel so I waited there mistakenly thinking he had to go out from where he went in.  I later learned that one can escape into the Moslem quarter via an exit.  This was apparently what he did as the police came back and could not find him.  In the meantime, the men with the video cameras showed the film to the police.  And then, one brave soul . . . . .

One of the men on the bus came up to me while I was standing with the police and said he would like to help me.  He was thoroughly disgusted by what happened and he had witnessed the entire series of events.  This man gave the police his name and phone number and offered to be a witness.  He said he could not get up to help me because he was blocked by the men beating me and he was sure they would have all ganged up on him, too.  Perhaps this is why the bus driver did not stop.  I don't know.  But, the bus driver did not summon the police at the Kotel, either.  Yes - he was wearing a kippa, the black velvet kind.
The witness offered to get me a doctor as my face was red and starting to swell but I declined his kind offer and wished him a good Shabbos.  The police advised me to make a report at the Old City Police Station (Kishlei) inside Sha'ar Yaffo which I did at 9 a.m. with the commander, Yoram.

And, Sunday morning, November 26 I was back on the # 2 bus in my makom kavua.  Curiously missing was the "holy" man and his defenders.  And nobody asked me to go to the back of the bus.

Miriam Shear

P.S.  I have sent an email to Egged filing a formal complaint.  I am asking that the # 2 bus not be granted Mehadrin status as I feel that this privilege has been nullified by the actions and inactions of the # 2 passengers.    And YES - you may print this, post it on your web site, forward it, do with it as you please.  Covering up what we are afraid will be a Chillul Hashem will not rein in such evil - only exposure.  Violence against one's fellow Jews should have a very, very heavy cost until it is no longer "acceptable" .


Woman beaten on Jerusalem bus for refusing to move to rear seat
By Daphna Berman
Ha'artetz
December,2006

A woman who reported a vicious attack by an ad-hoc "modesty patrol" on a Jerusalem bus last month is now lining up support for her case and may be included in a petition to the High Court of Justice over the legality of sex-segregated buses.

Miriam Shear says she was traveling to pray at the Western Wall in Jerusalem's Old City early on November 24 when a group of ultra-Orthodox (Haredi) men attacked her for refusing to move to the back of the Egged No. 2 bus. She is now in touch with several legal advocacy and women's organizations, and at the same time, waiting for the police to apprehend her attackers.

In her first interview since the incident, Shear says that on the bus three weeks ago, she was slapped, kicked, punched and pushed by a group of men who demanded that she sit in the back of the bus with the other women. The bus driver, in response to a media inquiry, denied that violence was used against her, but Shear's account has been substantiated by an unrelated eyewitness on the bus who confirmed that she sustained an unprovoked "severe beating."

Shear, an American-Israeli woman who currently lives in Canada, says that on a recent five-week vacation to Israel, she rode the bus daily to the Old City to pray at sunrise. Though not defined by Egged as a sex-segregated "mehadrin" bus, women usually sit in the back, while men sit in the front, as a matter of custom.

"Every two or three days, someone would tell me to sit in the back, sometimes politely and sometimes not," she recalled this week in a telephone interview. "I was always polite and said 'No. This is not a synagogue. I am not going to sit in the back.'"

But Shear, a 50-year-old religious woman, says that on the morning of the 24th, a man got onto the bus and demanded her seat - even though there were a number of other seats available in the front of the bus.

"I said, I'm not moving and he said, 'I'm not asking you, I'm telling you.' Then he spat in my face and at that point, I was in high adrenaline mode and called him a son-of-a-bitch, which I am not proud of. Then I spat back. At that point, he pushed me down and people on the bus were screaming that I was crazy. Four men surrounded me and slapped my face, punched me in the chest, pulled at my clothes, beat me, kicked me. My snood [hair covering] came off. I was fighting back and kicked one of the men in his privates. I will never forget the look on his face."

Shear says that when she bent down in the aisle to retrieve her hair covering, "one of the men kicked me in the face. Thank God he missed my eye. I got up and punched him. I said, 'I want my hair covering back' but he wouldn't give it to me, so I took his black hat and threw it in the aisle."

'Stupid American'

Throughout the encounter, Shear says the bus driver "did nothing." The other passengers, she says, blamed her for not moving to the back of the bus and called her a "stupid American with no sechel [common sense.] People blamed me for not knowing my place and not going to the back of the bus where I belong."

According to Yehoshua Meyer, the eyewitness to the incident, Shear's account is entirely accurate. "I saw everything," he said. "Someone got on the bus and demanded that she go to the back, but she didn't agree. She was badly beaten and her whole body sustained hits and kicks. She tried to fight back and no one would help her. I tried to help, but someone was stopping me from getting up. My phone's battery was dead, so I couldn't call the police. I yelled for the bus driver to stop. He stopped once, but he didn't do anything. When we finally got to the Kotel [Western Wall], she was beaten badly and I helped her go to the police."

Shear says that when she first started riding the No. 2 line, she did not even know that it was sometimes sex-segregated. She also says that sitting in the front is simply more comfortable. "I'm a 50-year-old woman and I don't like to sit in the back. I'm dressed appropriately and I was on a public bus."

"It is very dangerous for a group of people to take control over a public entity and enforce their will without going through due process," she said. "Even if they [Haredim who want a segregated bus] are a majority - and I don't think they are - they have options available. They can petition Egged or hire their own private line. But as long as it's a public bus, I don't care if there are 500 people telling me where to sit. I can sit wherever I want and so can anyone else."

Meyer says that throughout the incident, the other passengers blamed Shear for not sitting in the back. "They'll probably claim that she attacked them first, but that's totally untrue. She was abused terribly, and I've never seen anything like it."

Word of Shear's story traveled quickly after she forwarded an e-mail detailing her experience. She has been contacted by a number of groups, including Shatil, the New Israel Fund's Empowerment and Training Center for Social Change; Kolech, a religious women's forum; the Israel Religious Action Center (IRAC), the legal advocacy arm of the local Reform movement; and the Jewish Orthodox Feminist Alliance (JOFA).

In the coming month, IRAC will be submitting a petition to the High Court of Justice against the Transportation Ministry over the issue of segregated Egged buses. IRAC attorney Orly Erez-Likhovski is in touch with Shear and is considering including her in the petition.

Although the No. 2 Jerusalem bus where the incident occurred is not actually defined as a mehadrin line, Erez-Likhovski says that Shear's story is further proof that the issue requires legal clarification. About 30 Egged buses are designated as mehadrin, mostly on inter-city lines, but they are not marked to indicate this. "There's no way to identify a mehadrin bus, which in itself is a problem," she said.

"Theoretically, a person can sit wherever they want, even on a mehadrin line, but we're seeing that people are enforcing [the gender segregation] even on non-mehadrin lines and that's the part of the danger," she said.

On a mehadrin bus, women enter and exit through the rear door, and the seats from the rear door back are generally considered the "women's section." A child is usually sent forward to pay the driver.

The official responses

In a response from Egged, the bus driver denied that Shear was physically attacked in any way.

"In a thorough inquiry that we conducted, we found that the bus driver does not confirm that any violence was used against the complainant, " Egged spokesman Ron Ratner wrote.

"According to the driver, once he saw that there was a crowd gathering around her, he stopped the bus and went to check what was going on. He clarified to the passengers that the bus was not a mehadrin line and that all passengers on the line are permitted to sit wherever they want on the bus. After making sure that the passengers returned to their seats, he continued driving."

The Egged response also noted that their drivers "are not able and are not authorized to supervise the behavior of the passengers in all situations."

Ministry of Transportation spokesperson Avner Ovadia said in response that the mehadrin lines are "the result of agreements reached between Egged and Haredi bodies" and are therefore unconnected to the ministry.

A spokesperson for the Jerusalem police said the case is still under investigation.


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