Apparently we needed to see a scared little girl who was spit upon in order to understand that a red line has been crossed. Sadly, we needed a barrage of curses, beatings, humiliation, threats and prohibitions on our streets - like in the ghettos. For years, we have carried the burden. But recently, we have fallen asleep at the wheel when it comes to preserving our fundamental values: a shared destiny, mutual and social responsibility, fairness, mutual respect and justice. As we build and create, each person trying in his or her own way, we have founded a community that not only looks up to the heavens, but also reflects back on itself. In praying for our safety, so that God forbid we should never tire, we must make sure that we continue to carry the social stretcher, to ensure that the heart of the economy we developed keeps on beating, and that we can draw on its accounts. People immediately shout "incitement" the moment someone dares raise the alarm in light of recent events. They tell us that talk like this reminds them of Germany in the late 1930s. It is not hate; it is accumulated wrath. Enough. It is time to tell the truth: we are no less Jewish than they are, we are no less Israeli than they are and we are much more human than they are. We have gotten used to a reality here in which a government cannot be established without them; we must leave them to their druthers because Torah really is their profession. We have seen how this sector grows. We were blind to how the shadow they cast over all of us has grown. We put up with their blackmail and evasion of military service, providing criteria designed just for them. We were silent as they set up separate educational institutions, behind fences that blocked core curriculum studies; later they put barriers between little boys and girls because of their color or ethnic origin. And we were silent. We held ourselves back as they slowly closed down street after street, neighborhoods and businesses. But their spitting in the face of a sweet girl from Beit Shemesh finally woke us up. The time has come to take strong action against those who break the law anywhere, not only in the darkness of Beit Shemesh. The majority of the ultra-Orthodox themselves will support it too. Leadership that does not understand its responsibility clearly needs us to explain the way: along with the necessary legal proceedings, the government must immediately eliminate living stipends for anyone caught or documented in connection with violence, verbal or physical, against women. So even those who have been terrorized by primitive conservatism, which has no connection whatsoever with Judaism, will not have to be fearful. The government must immediately start a recruitment drive for positions in the IDF that do not require much training. The recruitment will start on that very same occupied street in Beit Shemesh. The government has power and the public has to trust in it. Unless, in the absence of enforcement and action, you tell us to take care of it ourselves. In that case, thousands will take to the streets, to liberate them from their closure, and to protect with their bodies any woman who feels threatened. Do not tell us that we are inciting a "civil war" between brothers; people who act that way are not my brothers. The writer is a strategic adviser.
Occupy Beit Shemesh
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