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Police remove Beit Shemesh segregation signs
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By YAAKOV LAPPIN AND JPOST.COM STAFF
12/25/2011
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Move follows report exposing extremist harassment of modern orthodox women; haredim attack Channel 2 crew filming in city.
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Police
and municipal inspectors removed signs in a haredi (ultra-orthodox)
area of Beit Shemesh calling for segregated sidewalks for women on Sunday
night. Police said crowds of men surrounded the inspectors, adding that the crowds were dispersed without incident.
The sign removal followed a report aired by Channel 2 on Friday night 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."
RELATED:
PM: No place for harassment or discrimination in Israel
Metzger: Haredim have no right to force segregation on bus
Earlier on Sunday, a crowd of haredim [ultra-Orthodox] attacked a Channel 2 camera crew in Beit Shemesh. The
crew was in the city to film street signs discriminating against
women as a follow-up of their original exposé, 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.
The
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.
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."
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