Slippery Slope

A Bar-Ilan University academic course titled “Marital Communication” is open only to women and has a prerequisite of at least one year of marriage. (Haaretz)

The Badaz Agudat Israel organization that provides seals of Kashrut demands that the ‘Haimeshe Essin’ restaurant in the neighborhood of Rehavia in Jerusalem stop employing waitresses on Thursday nights. This is due to the restaurant being a popular recreation spot among Yeshiva students and young Haredi men.

(Hebrew)

Data collected by the Industry, Trade and Labor Ministry’s Research and Economics Administration shows that some 165,000 women, 11.4 percent of all working women, were sexually harassed at their workplaces in 2011.

Kobi Levi, a senior journalist in the Shas party magazine “from day to day”, claimed in his weekly column that promiscuity in the IDF is responsible for its failures. He gives as examples of promiscuity the “marginalization” of religious soldiers who refuse to hear women singing and the appointment of women to senior positions in the IDF. He wrote that “the loose army, despite its promiscuity, cannot undermine the heavenly protection we gain through Torah studies”.

(Hebrew)

The High Court of Justice criticized the fact that no woman was elected for the committee that appoints dayanim (rabbinical court judges), in response to an appeal by religious women’s organization Emunah. Until lately, at least one woman served in the ten-member committee, but in November the Israeli Bar Association chose two men as representatives.

The Immigration and Absorption Ministry has censored a landmark research report documenting the murder of women in Israel’s Ethiopian community. Ministry officials refused to release the report, claiming that it contained sensitive material that could violate people’s privacy. According to the report, “Both the families of the murderer and of the victim were … unsatisfied with the help they had been offered from external sources, including welfare organizations and professionals.” The minor children are taken care of by relatives, institutions and foster families.

Haredi men in Mehadrin bus lines (?) peal off the stickers stating that the law forbids to harass passengers for their choice of place, says Gideon Mizrahi, Chairman of Israel’s largest bus company.

The credit card company Isracard (MasterCard) has launched a different advertising campaign in Jerusalem than elsewhere in the country, by leaving renowned actress Gila Almagor out of their billboards in the capital.

A recent report by the Reform Center for Religion and State showed a 66% increase in reported incidents of exclusion of women. The number of conventions carried out by public entities which enforced segregation doubled, and incidents at cemeteries have tripled. The report notes that exclusion spread to airlines, health clinics, voting booths, radio stations, conferences and public events, private businesses and billboards.

Women are not fairly represented in the higher echelons of political/security decision-making in Israel: the Forum of Eight senior ministers advising the Prime Minister does not include a single woman; the Security Cabinet has a single female member, in the role of an observer; no woman serve in any senior position on the National Security Council.  Furthermore, in the past twenty years, only five Palestinian and two Israeli women were members of the respective peace negotiation teams.

(Hebrew)