The Egged public bus company has signed a new agreement with the Canaan advertising agency that will, finally, see ads depicting women posted on Egged buses. The agreement was approved by the government, as well, and the government has agreed to help cover the costs of any damage to buses caused by haredi vandalism directed against the ads.
Egged Finally To Stop Gender-Based Discrimination, Govt To Help Cover Costs Of Haredi Vandalism
Shmarya Rosenberg • FailedMessiah.com
The Egged public bus company has signed a new agreement with the Canaan advertising agency that will, finally, see ads depicting women posted on Egged buses.
The agreement was approved by the government, as well, and the government has agreed to help cover the costs of any damage to buses caused by haredi vandalism directed against the ads, Yeshiva World reported.
Egged illegally stopped accepting any ads that depicted females – even infants or cartoon characters – and then progressed to banning all ads depicting dinosaurs, cartoon space aliens, and non-kosher animals in an attempt to placate haredim who found these ads to be immodest or contradictory to their extreme interpretation of Jewish law.
Along the way it banned an ad from the Yerushalmim political party that showed the face of its candidate, Rachel Azaria, who is Modern Orthodox.
Azaria and Yerushalmim petitioned the High Court of Justice and Egged was unable to defend itself.
So, desperate and facing High Court censure, Egged issued a blanket ban on all ads depicting any life form – including modestly clothed adult males – in an attempt to escape punishment for its illegal gender-based censorship by claiming all depictions of both females and males were now banned.
The High Court didn’t buy it.
But Egged continued to ban all ads depicting any life form anyway.
About a year passed. And then Egged then again refused another ad from Yerushalmim that showed the face of Azaria. Yerushalmim petitioned the High Court again in response.
This eventually led to the new agreement between Egged and Canaan that remains in force until the end of 2014.
Last year, Egged’s CEO openly stated that when its buses operate in heavily haredi areas of the country, the company operates them as if it were a haredi company and those public buses were haredi buses. This policy, which is in clear violation of Israeli civil right s laws, was used to illegally gender-segregated public buses, ban any ads with pictures of women and girls (even if modestly clothed), and to give illegal discounts on intercity route frequented by haredim while not giving discounts on similar routes frequented by secular Jews and other non-haredim.
Egged officials and others close to the issue repeatedly cite haredi violence against buses, bus shelters and bus passengers based on anti-female discrimination as their reason for banning ad depictions of women, girls, and female babies and for illegally gender-segregating its buses on those heavily haredi routes.