A man walks by graffiti that equates fashion with promiscuity on the walls of the Jewish ultra-Orthodox city of Bnei Brak, east of Tel Aviv. Ilan Mizrahi / The National
Scrawled across a wall on a busy main street is the statement in Hebrew: “Fashion equals promiscuity”. For women in some Israeli communities, such public sentiments are not simply idle graffiti – they are a warning, and one that is increasingly backed by threats of physical violence...
Reports of women being attacked on the street or in their homes have been steadily rising in the local media. In one widely publicised incident over the summer, a 14-year-old girl from Upper Beitar, a large ultra-Orthodox settlement in the West Bank south of Jerusalem, had acid poured on her face and body in what is believed to have been the work of a modesty patrol. The girl told a paramedic treating her that she had been repeatedly threatened before the attack. According to local media, the girl was wearing loose-fitting trousers at the time of the attack.
What? You mean there are religious extremists in Israel?? America's #1 friend and "only democracy" in the Middle East??? Noooo - say it ain't so! And, why is it that we hear almost on a daily basis all about Saudi Arabia's "Religious Police" but not a word about Israel's "Modesty Patrols?"
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