WOMAN BEATEN ON JERUSALEM BUS FOR NOT MOVING TO REAR SEAT [+] serious ballot by Kev24 created Tue Dec 19, 06 Miriam Shear says she was traveling to pray at the Western Wall in Jerusalem's Old City early on November 24 when a group of ultra-Orthodox (Haredi) men attacked her for refusing to move to the back of the Egged No. 2 bus. Shear, an American-Israeli woman who currently lives in Canada, says that on a recent five-week vacation to Israel, she rode the bus daily to the Old City to pray at sunrise. Though not defined by Egged as a sex-segregated "mehadrin" bus, women usually sit in the back, while men sit in the front, as a matter of custom. "Every two or three days, someone would tell me to sit in the back, sometimes politely and sometimes not," she recalled this week in a telephone interview. "I was always polite and said 'No. This is not a synagogue. I am not going to sit in the back." But Shear, a 50-year-old religious woman, says that on the morning of the 24th, a man got onto the bus and demanded her seat - even though there were a number of other seats available in the front of the bus. "I said, I'm not moving and he said, 'I'm not asking you, I'm telling you.' Then he spat in my face and at that point, I was in high adrenaline mode and called him a son-of-a-bitch, which I am not proud of. Then I spat back. At that point, he pushed me down and people on the bus were screaming that I was crazy. Four men surrounded me and slapped my face, punched me in the chest, pulled at my clothes, beat me, kicked me. My snood (hair covering) came off. I was fighting back and kicked one of the men in his privates. I will never forget the look on his face." Shear says that when she bent down in the aisle to retrieve her hair covering, "one of the men kicked me in the face. Thank God he missed my eye. I got up and punched him. I said, 'I want my hair covering back' but he wouldn't give it to me, so I took his black hat and threw it in the aisle." Throughout the encounter, Shear says the bus driver "did nothing." The other passengers, she says, blamed her for not moving to the back of the bus and called her a "stupid American with no sechel (common sense) People blamed me for not knowing my place and not going to the back of the bus where I belong." According to Yehoshua Meyer, the eyewitness to the incident, Shear's account is entirely accurate. "I saw everything," he said. "Someone got on the bus and demanded that she go to the back, but she didn't agree. She was badly beaten and her whole body sustained hits and kicks. She tried to fight back and no one would help her. I tried to help, but someone was stopping me from getting up. My phone's battery was dead, so I couldn't call the police. I yelled for the bus driver to stop. He stopped once, but he didn't do anything. When we finally got to the Kotel (Western Wall), she was beaten badly and I helped her go to the police." Meyer says that throughout the incident, the other passengers blamed Shear for not sitting in the back. "They'll probably claim that she attacked them first, but that's totally untrue. She was abused terribly, and I've never seen anything like it." "Theoretically, a person can sit wherever they want, even on a mehadrin line, but we're seeing that people are enforcing the gender segregation even on non-mehadrin lines and that's the part of the danger," she said. On a mehadrin bus, women enter and exit through the rear door, and the seats from the rear door back are generally considered the "women's section." A child is usually sent forward to pay the driver. so maybe it's not just radical islam? maybe it's any form or religious fervor that is the problem. maybe it's the middle east as a whole that's the problem. did this woman deserve her beating? radical islam is still worse radical judaism is worse all religious radicalism is bad the middle east is the real problem she violated religious law, so the beating was justified the beating is not justified at all next time she should bring a stun gun and pepper spray Jews can be just as intolerant as Muslims Ballot #110519 : SEE RESULTS Comment: show your vote with comment?

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