After cases of discrimination against women on buses, PM calls to punish offenders
Netanyahu says Israel ‘a free country, in which nobody will set limits on who can use public transportation,’ following series of incidents involving drivers and Haredi passengers
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday condemned discrimination against secular women by bus drivers or by Haredi passengers, following a recent series of such incidents.
In a terse statement, Netanyahu called for anyone who discriminates against passengers on public transportation to be punished.
“The State of Israel is a free country, in which nobody will set limits on who can use public transportation, and in which nobody will dictate where he or she will sit,” he said. “Those who do this are breaking the law and should be punished.”
Transportation Minister Miri Regev, a member of Netanyahu’s Likud party, similarly vowed no tolerance for the phenomenon, saying any case of discrimination against female riders should be dealt with “severely.”
She also said two drivers have been suspended over the latest incidents until inquiries are wrapped up.
“I again clarify: There will be no exclusion of women on public transportation. Period,” she said.
The condemnations came a day after a bus driver ordered a group of teenage girls to sit in the back and cover themselves up due to their supposedly immodest dress. In a recording of the incident, which occurred on a Nateev Express 885 line from Ashdod to Kfar Tavor, the driver could be heard dismissing the girls’ complaints when one told him she felt humiliated.
“Enough with this nonsense, you don’t have religious people in your home. You live in a kibbutz, detached from the world. You live in a Jewish state and you should respect the people living here. The fact that you live in a kibbutz and were raised this way, I’m sorry for you,” the driver could be heard saying.
Also Sunday, Tzefi Erez, an 88-year-old woman from Givatayim, told the Kan public broadcaster that a bus driver repeatedly ignored her when she asked him if she had gotten on the correct line. When the woman’s husband asked the driver why he wasn’t responding to her, the driver said that he refuses to speak to women.
“I was deeply hurt. I am a Holocaust survivor,” the woman said. “I’ve suffered enough… I came to the State of Israel, and suddenly I’m in Iran. Tomorrow they’ll tell me to cover my face.”
The Dan bus company put out a statement apologizing for the incident, and said that it had personally contacted Erez and her husband, though Erez said that no one from Dan had spoken to her.
Two similar instances occurred last week. A bus driver in Ashdod told a woman that she could not board a bus because it was meant only for ultra-Orthodox men, and in Tel Aviv a driver berated a woman for wearing a tank top.
Some so-called mehadrin (strictly kosher) buses, which enforced gender separation to accommodate ultra-Orthodox passengers by having men sit in the front and women in the back, operated in Israel until the High Court of Justice ruled in 2011 that the practice was illegal.
