A crowd of
haredim [ultra-Orthodox] attacked a Channel 2 camera crew in Beit Shemesh on Sunday. The
crew was in the city to film street signs discriminating against
women, and were attacked by residents opposed to their presence.
"They called us 'Israel haters,' beat us with their hands and threw stones at us," a Channel 2 reporter said.
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crew alerted the police who arrived at the scene of the incident. "If the
police hadn't intervened within 10 minutes, I don't know how it would
have ended," the journalist said. The police escorted the team out of the city.
The reporter said that the assailants smashed the windows of the cars
that the team had arrived in, and also broke some of the equipment they
were carrying.
He explained that they had gone there following
Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu's statement earlier in the day, saying that discriminatory signs should be removed.
On Friday night, Channel 2 aired a report showing an
eight-year old modern orthodox girl afraid to walk 300 meters to school
because of harassment from some haredim because of her attire. The
reporter also interviewed a haredi man saying it was permissible to spit
at even a school age girl if she was not dressed "properly."
On Sunday, the reporter emphasized that no-one tried to stop the attack, and added: "I don't know if they recognized me from
the report that we filmed in the city,
but that's not important... All morning people were talking about an
extreme group, but I saw dozens of people full of hate, and nothing
else."