Miriam Shear, an American-Israeli woman, was traveling to pray at the Western Wall in Jerusalem’s Old City on November 24th when a group of ultra-Orthodox men attacked her for refusing to move to the back of the bus. An eyewitness substantiated Shear’s claim that she was slapped, kicked, punched, and pushed by the group of men. The bus driver did nothing to stop the attack, and denied any violence took place. Shear is still waiting for the police to apprehend her attackers.

Shear, who was on a five-week vacation in Israel, says she was aware of the custom for women to sit in the back of the bus prior to the attack. “Every two or three days, someone would tell me to sit in the back, sometimes politely and sometimes not,” she recalled. “I was always polite and said ‘No. This is not a synagogue. I am not going to sit in the back.’” Shear said the violence started when a man got on the bus and demanded her seat, despite the fact that there were plenty of others available. “I said, I’m not moving and he said, ‘I’m not asking you, I’m telling you.’ Then he spat in my face and at that point, I was in high adrenaline mode and called him a son-of-a-bitch, which I am not proud of. Then I spat back. At that point, he pushed me down and people on the bus were screaming that I was crazy. Four men surrounded me and slapped my face, punched me in the chest, pulled at my clothes, beat me, kicked me.” As Shear bent down to retrieve her hair covering, one of the men kicked her in the face.

Throughout the encounter, the other passengers called her a “stupid American” for not giving in to the man’s orders. “People blamed me for not knowing my place and not going to the back of the bus where I belong.” Yehoshua Meyer, an eyewitness on the bus, verified Shear’s account as entirely accurate. “She was badly beaten and her whole body sustained hits and kicks. She tried to fight back and no one would help her. I tried to help, but someone was stopping me from getting up. My phone’s battery was dead, so I couldn’t call the police.”

In Israel, ‘Mehadrin’ buses require that women passengers dress modestly, sit in the back, and enter and exit through the rear door. A child is usually sent to the front to pay the driver. The bus on which Shear’s attack took place was not a Mehadrin bus, though it seems some passengers are now enforcing the sex segregation rules on non-Mehadrin lines as well. The bus company denies that the driver was negligent, or that the incident even took place. Various womens groups are supporting Shear’s case, with one of them submitting a petition to the High Court of Justice to question the legality of sex-segregated buses.

There’s something very ironic in the bus passengers denouncing Shear for being an American while her American tax dollars go towards supporting Israel’s oppressive system. It’s always bothered me that most Americans view Israel as a shinning beacon of democracy and hope when it’s actually the biggest violator of human rights in the Middle East. Women in Israel are second-class citizens while Arabs are third-class citizens. So why Jimmy Carter is called an anti-Semite for drawing attention to Israel’s apartheid policies is beyond me. If America and Europe were ever serious about bringing peace and stability to the Middle East then they would stop supporting such a draconian neo-Zionist regime. The international community banded together in the 70’s and 80’s against South Africa for less.

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