Israeli airports won’t tell women that they don’t have to change seats at the request of ultra-Orthodox Jews
People
might be surprised to find that, although Israel is seen as a "Jewish
state," how secular it really is. As Phil Zuckerman notes in the article I mentioned the other day:
The only nation of secular significance in the Middle East is Israel; 37 percent of Israelis are atheist or agnostic (Kedem 1995) and 75 percent of Israelis define themselves as ‘‘not religious’’ or having a ‘‘non-religious orientation.’’ (Dashefsky et al. 2003).
That's
a lot more secular than the U.S., but not a surprise to many Jews. As
the old joke goes, "What do you call a Jew who doesn't believe in God?"
Answer: "A Jew." But Israel still caters to its Orthodox minority, even
when simple decency says that it shouldn't.
A case in point, documented by both The Guardian and Newsweek,
involves a subject I've written about before: ultra-Orthodox ("Haredi")
Jews refusing to sit by women, and airlines trying to accommodate these
religionists by moving the women. (See my posts here, here, here, here, and here.)
In the most recent case, documented in the last two links, 82 year old
Renee Rabinowitz—a Holocaust survivor—sued El Al for making her move,
and won a $14,000 court judgment with the help of the Israeli Religious Action Center (IRAC),
the Israeli equivalent of the Freedom from Religion Foundation. That
judgment also prohibited gender discrimination in seating.
But
recently the IRAC wanted to put up ads at Ben Gurion airport, near Tel
Aviv, letting women know that they had the legal right to keep their
seats despite the complaints of bigoted religionists. (The ruling
against gender discrimination in seating applies to both buses and
planes, by decree of the Israeli supreme court.) Sadly, the airport
refused, which is tantamount to refuse to inform women of their legal
rights. The Israeli airport authority banned the ads as being
"politically divisive."
Here's the ad that was banned:
Well, it's not at all politically divisive. It may be religiously
divisive, but I think most of us agree that where religious dictum
conflicts with civil rights, the latter must win. Render unto Caesar
what is Caesar's. I hope the airports reconsider, as their refusal to
tell women of their rights allows religious sentiments to trump civil
liberties.
IRAC also had a campaign video, which I've embedded below. The narrator turns into Woody Allen at about 1:20:
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