"To my surprise, the boy got up, turned his back on me, snapped his fingers as if he were addressing a dog, and said to me: 'Go backwards, that's where you belong."
Haredim Accost, Harass Secular Woman On Public Bus, Driver Fails To Call Police
Shmarya Rosenberg • FailedMessiah.com
A female employee of Israel’s Foreign Ministry was forced to get off a Jerusalem public bus after haredi men demanded that she move to the back of the bus. The woman, Anna Schulkin, who is in her 50s, was riding on Egged’s No. 36 bus in the Ramot neighborhood Sunday afternoon. The only open seat was in the front of the bus near a haredi teen boy.
"To my surprise, the boy got up, turned his back on me, snapped his fingers as if he were addressing a dog, and said to me: 'Go backwards, that's where you belong,'" Schulkin told Ynet.
None of the haredi men on the bus criticized the boy’s behavior or tried to stop him.
Shocked, Schulkin reportedly told the haredi boy there is no law that prevents her from sitting in the front of the bus.
"There were no other vacant seats. It was incredibly hot, and because of principle I decided not to give up. After I refused to move, the boy got up and started inciting all the other men, who backed everything he said,” Schulkin said.
So Schulkin says she went to the bus driver, who said the law was on her side and she could sit anywhere on the bus she wanted to. legally right and could sit wherever she wanted.
Schulkin began documenting what was happening with her camera. The haredim continued to harass her. A haredi man grabbed her bags from the seat and threatened to throw them on the floor.
"I need this seat because I suffer from intestinal gas,” he said.
The haredim became even more agitated and Schulkin got off the bus before her planned stop.
"I got off fast, but not before I took as many pictures as possible. Our home is on fire. We are burning each other, she wrote in an angry Facebook post.
Schulkin told Ynet she hadn’t realized the bus driver was supposed to stop the bus and call police when haredim harassed her – something the driver did not do.
“At that stage I didn’t know that it's the driver's duty to stop and call the police. I saw that he was afraid of his own shadow, so instead of feeling sorry for myself, I felt sorry for him.…I decided that I didn’t want to flex the muscles I don’t have, and got off the bus,” she reportedly said.
Schulkin filed a complaint about the incident on the Egged website and reportedly received and immediate response from the public bus company saying it would investigate the incident.
But Egged has a long history of turning a blind eye to haredi sexual harassment and violence, a history so well known and documented that Israel’s highest court was at one point on the verge of issuing a ruling against the company that could have devastated it.
Since that happened, Egged has been better about talking the talk of protecting women’s and minorities’ rights, but its actions have lagged far behind. Even with that recent history, Egged’s spokesman, Ron Ratner, claimed Egged would not “accept” haredi “hooliganism.”
"I strongly condemn any expression of racism and/or behavior on the background of religious coercion. We will not tolerate hooliganism in the public domain in general, and on Egged buses in particular. We will not accept any takeover attempt by radical elements or any exclusion of women on the bus, as the complainant experienced.…As far as we know, the driver backed the passenger. He may have not been very assertive, as he should have been. I assume that because he is a member of a minority group who was supposed to deal with radical haredim, he was afraid to do so. In any event, we will look into the incident with the driver. I am certain that had he known the passenger would get off the bus because of it, he would have gotten more involved. We will emphasize the procedures so that they are clear to everyone,” Ratner told Ynet.
In a long list of similar incidents over the past several years, Egged drivers have almost always done nothing at all to help women even when haredi harassment crossed the line into violence, or have openly sided with the haredi harassers.
In response, Egged has repeatedly promised to improve drivers’ training and has promised to take action against drivers who fail to follow company policy. However, there is little evidence any such action has actually been taken.
Soon after fleeing the haredi harassment by disembarking early, Schulkin got on another bus and ended up sitting next to three haredi men. None of them bothered her.
"I told them what had happened to me [a few minutes before on the previous bus] and said, 'I can't believe you're letting me sit here [without harassing me]. God bless you.' It's important to know that not all people are the same,” Schulkin says she told the haredi men.
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