2 Israeli female soldiers chased by rioting by ultra Orthodox men rescued by police

[IwantToRetire]

In staggering footage of the attack, a handful of officers were seen shielding the two servicewomen as they fled a Haredi mob thronging the street, which was littered with garbage and overturned garbage dumpsters. ...

One of the servicewomen told the Walla news outlet that she had asked her commanders not to send them into the city, but was given no choice. The pair had entered wearing skirts and left their weapons at home so as not to provoke residents. ...

Speaking on the edge of the city after the riots had calmed, Tel Aviv District police commander Haim Sargaroff appeared to place partial blame on the army, saying it “did not coordinate” with law enforcement in advance.

“The moment we know that an IDF force is entering [a Haredi area], we are prepared to provide reinforcement, but when they enter without coordinating with us, when they enter and start carrying out an operation, we are only [able to] react,” he said. ...

https://www.timesofisrael.com/2-female-soldiers-chased-by-rioting-haredi-mob-in-bnei-brak-rescued-by-police/

Sorry, there’s two women who were chased by religious nut jobs and the first response is to say they were being provocative?! On the feminist board?! Fuck right off with that bullshit.

It is, of course, outrageous that in so many places men just can’t cope with the idea that women are whole human beings. Women should be able to carry out their jobs without fear of violence.

Ummm their attackers were Jewish too

The hard right zionists in Israel have been attempting to subdue the jewish resistance to their inhumane policies with police brutality particularly conscription since forever.

So much for 'the only democracy in the middle east'.

Whoosh. The IDF deliberately sent those women in alone so they could milk their abuse because they knew it was a hostile crowd thanks to decades of police brutality against them.

Oh, & you don't get to use your job to oppress people & then claim that being a woman excuses you from the consequences of your own actions.

Perhaps Israel is willing to deal with it's religious zealots unlike this country who are happy to bend the knee and suck up to them.

"religious zealots" = anti conscription for the purposes of genocide.

First posts nails it.

It is part of a wider pattern - the same week as we hear the Taliban reducing women to slave status. And Christians are not immune, with extreme versions advocating trad wifedom.
I don't know about other religions, but the Abrahamic offshoots do seem not to recognise women as equals, ignoring parts of scripture which stress they are. The extremist religious men must be terribly insecure in their faiths if they feel compelled to treat women this way.
I'd like to see the texts they use to justify it. The summary of the Law as taught by Hillel and subsequently endorsed by Jesus teaches 'love thy neighbour as thyself' and does not specify only men. So that shows Jewish and Christian misogynists as wrong. Don't know about the Koran, but Muslims have used something the justify abuse of non- Muslim women over here.
Grrr. How to persuade people your god is right - Not.

Haredi = Hamas?

No, Haredi are ultra-orthodox Jews.

Sorry I was being sarcastic. The poster I was replying to is suggesting that the Haredi Jews are the good guys because they are refusing to engage in 'genocide'.

Having read the news report I can't really see what is feminist about it except that the soldiers were female.
They weren't attacked because they were women but because they were soldiers.

'The servicewomen, squad commanders at the Education and Youth Corps, had been on an official home visit to one of the soldiers in their unit when they were confronted by the mob. Contrary to some claims, they were not members of the Military Police.'

The ambush and subsequent riots received across-the-board condemnation, including from Haredi politicians and spiritual leaders, who warned that the incident might damage the community’s anti-conscription efforts.

The position of the Haredi is complex. While they tend not to be zionists, they don’t support the idea of a Palestinian state and make up about 1/3 of West Bank settlers because property there is cheap, they have large families, a high rate of poverty, and a low rate of employment. While they resist conscription, they are heavily reliant on the IDFs presence in the territory to make their occupation tenable. As they represent around 10% of the country’s Haredi population, when combined with incidents such the that posted by the OP, it’s making the case for anti conscription increasingly difficult for community leaders, especially as 27% of Haredi households are heavily reliant on state benefits and 80% are net beneficiaries of the state.

Just a little context to chew on, there,

Thank you, interesting info, group's sponging off society brings out the far right, bigoted, Nazis in me. If they won't pay into the collective they shouldn't be allowed to take out of it.

Those rioters do not represent Judaism, not even Orthodox Judaism. They are religious fundamentalists who want Israel to be a theocracy. And we all know what happens to human rights in theocracies. They and their sects are the only people who want Israel to be a theocracy. They are not supported by the majority of Israelis. Meanwhile, these young men expect and accept the protection of the Israeli military, but refuse to serve. These young men expect and accept financial support from the Israeli government, but refuse to work. Like all fundamentalists, they attack their own if anyone diverts from their narrative - like the volunteer First Reponder from Hatzalah, who, if he was in that area, was probably an Ultra-Orthodox Jew like them.

And we don’t know why the female soldiers were there. They were not arresting conscription evaders because that’s a job for the Military Police. They could even have been there on a welfare visit. There are many Ultra-Orthodox men who already serve in the IDF. Perhaps that’s why the women’s commanding officer sent them there without first coordinating with the police.

No, I do not think that this is a feminism issue (unless in regard to the commanding officer’s decision, but we don’t have enough information to know). This is fundamentalism issue.

Just to clarify: this incident did not happen in the West Bank, but in a suburb of Tel-Aviv.

Thanks for this useful into.

The background is the overturning of the rule that Haredi [ultra-orthodox] men who are studying religion are exempt from conscription to the army. I'm not an expert but I suspect an awful lot of Haredi men are studying religion, so that's probably a blanket exemption.

I think that also means that Haredi women have to take on the responsibilities of family finances, etc., while the men study.

The Haredi aren't objecting on the grounds of individual IDF campaigns e.g. Gaza, they just believe that their exempt status should not have been removed, and clearly are prepared to go to extreme lengths to protest about it.

[I've just seen Dilbertian's post, sorry this is a bit of a cross-post]

Being a woman matters. One of the Haredi issues with IDF service is men and women serving together. They claim it's one of the reasons they are unable to serve and that it is an inappropriate environment. It's not as simple as just attacking soldiers.

The Haredim refuse to serve, but they don't actually object to what the IDF does.

The IDF defends Israel....Israel Defence Force.

I thought that it was not so much that Haredim are not Zionists, just that they believe that it is God will deliver Israel to the Jews, not the state. Of course, they owe their current freedom to practice their religion to the Jewish state, so they are in a bit of a bind there.

Yes there are issues around conscription and Haredi beliefs and women.
My problem with reading OP post is the selected pieces quoted imply this was an attack on women as women, that somehow these women were put in an unsafe position carelessly or deliberately.
Reading the whole piece gives a different picture.There's no evidence for this and no evidence the mob was motivated by the fact they're women.

Yes, it’s a curious situation. As is often the case with strict religious rules and the ultra conservative communities that claim to follow them, what’s on paper seems rather at odds with reality. For instance, in the case of the Haredi they are prohibited from participating in war and are supposed to seek peaceful resolutions, yet they’ll happily start violently rioting over things like a car park being open on a Saturday. Peaceful-shmeaceful.
As for whether the soldiers being female or not was part of the issue here, it’s hard to tell. Cast your mind back to 2011 when a mob of ultra orthodox men hurled abuse, rocks, even actual shit, at primary age girls going to school because they found the uniforms they were wearing immodest. The soldiers being women may not have been the direct cause of the most recent riot, but I’d put money on a bet that it didn’t help as the misogyny runs deep.

All this is actually a big long term problem for Israel. The ultra orthodox are the fastest growing demographic in the country and in a couple of decades will constitute a quarter of the population. Having 25% of citizens partly, and in some cases entirely, reliant on the state is not a viable way to run an economy. Add that 25% refusing to participate in the defence of said country when it has very hostile neighbours such as Iran (who use revenue from supplying oil to Russia to bolster its proxies such as Hezbollah and the Houthi, and therefore by a remove also helping to keep the bloody invasion of Ukraine ongoing) and the future looks gloomy indeed. Terrible behaviour by Israel such as its constant land grabs, unchecked settler violence and complete destruction of Palestine make it very hard now for its historic friends to keep supporting it when public opinion toward Israel in those countries is increasingly negative.
Geopolitics in the area are a mess. It’s easy enough to blame Western postwar meddling but it goes back much further than that to the Ottoman Empire, it’s collapse after the Balkan Wars, and even the Romans had problems keeping a lid on it.

they're the ones who don't have to do military service?

ETA. sorry, posted to early, i hadn't realised why they obected to service.

It will be interesting to see what happens in Israel as this demographic increases.