Haredim deface buses with picture of female MK
Banner advertisements bearing the face of Labor-Gesher’s No. 2 Knesset candidate, Orly Levy-Abecassis, were destroyed over the weekend in the haredi (ultra-Orthodox) city of Bnei Brak.
The ads also featured Labor-Gesher leader Amir Peretz and No. 3 candidate Itzik Shmuli, who is gay. But neither the pictures of Peretz, nor Shmuli were vandalized on the ads, which also bore the slogan “Human beings before everything.”
Peretz called the vandalism “unacceptable violence that is trying to push women in Israel back to the dark ages.” He vowed to take action to prevent it from happening again in the future.
Levy-Abecassis warned that removing women’s faces from buses could lead to them being banned from holding top economic and political offices in the name of Jewish law. “We will not surrender to bullying and we will not accept removing women from the public sphere in Israel in 2019,” Levy-Abecassis said.
The faces of women on buses have been vandalized in haredim communities and neighborhoods in the past, including then-Meretz leader Tamar Zandberg and then-Jerusalem mayoral candidate Rachel Azaria.
Azaria sued the Canaan Media company that refused to restore her advertisements to buses after they were vandalized. As part of the settlement reached, Azaria received a “compensation campaign” of bus ads – which included feminist messages beside pictures of prominent women – on 50 buses throughout Jerusalem for two weeks, reaching its peak on March 8, which was International Women’s Day.