I noted with much interest a report in today's Haaretz newspaper about a Hassidic woman who caused uproar on a bus in Ashdod earlier this week when she took a seat on the second row from the front and refused to proceed to the rear of the bus where it is 'taken as read' that she should sit in isolation form the religious male passengers.


The bus was a regular 451 service from Ashdod to Jerusalem and the 51-year-old lady concerned, one Yocheved Horowitz, steadfastly refused to be intimated by the male religious passengers on the vehicle who attempted to 'shame' her into joining the rest of her sex in what is effectively a segregated transport. Her actions, taken she said after a lifetime of compliance to the segregation within her society, have been referred to in various sections of the Israeli media as something of a 'Rosa Parks moment' - referring to the famously brave stance of the black lady passenger on a segregated bus in Montgomery, Alabama in 1955, who took her seat in a 'Whites Only section', a move that was one of the catalysts of the American Civil Rights movement.


Ms Horowitz's one-woman protest on the Ashdod line, is all the more admirable as she is the daughter of a prominent ultra-Orthodox French rabbi and her actions could have significant repercussions for her within her community. But having seen from the inside the prejudice against women in some segments of the ultra-Orthodox community, Horowitz decided that this was the right time to take a stand.


Her actions follow swiftly on the heels of a major incident earlier in the month when a secular woman took a seat on a public bus in what had been unofficially designated by the religious passengers as a 'male only area'. When she refused to move and give up her seat for a religious man there was uproar and she reportedly endured a volley of verbal abuse from the religious passengers. Tanya Rosenblit was then asked to leave the bus by the driver, but steadfastly refused. The driver then called the police who asked her to move to the back, but again Rosenblit refused. The incident made national headlines and caused a major debate in the Knesset and comment from the Prime Minister, together with support for Ms Rosenblit from secular female politicians from all shades of the political spectrum and from many well known faces in the Israeli media.


Israel is on a very slippery slope as the numbers of the ultra-Orthodox and Haredi communities rise rapidly.  Unless steps are taken to legislate against this unofficial segregation, what happened in Ashdod (and surely happens every day at various points of the compass in Israel), will happen again and again and eventually become the touch paper for genuine violence as secular and modern Orthodox Israelis fight for their rights to freedom of movement and expression in the face of a wave of repressive, archaic edicts from the 'Men in Black'.


On a loosely related theme, I received an email recently inviting me to a 15thanniversary reunion of my 'classmates' at the immigrant reception centre In Jerusalem, something I'm looking forward to. A great deal of water has flowed under the bridge since I arrived in the Holy City on that cold, winter's night to find myself billeted in a 10 x 8 room with iron bars on the windows, no heating, and no bedding. Ah, those were the days!


A few weeks after my arrival, (as I was getting to know the lie of the land), I took a bus from a religious neighbourhood and repeatedly attempted to take a seat alongside the religious male passengers, each and every one of whom either shuffled to the centre of the two-person seat in a quickly understood gesture that I wasn't welcome to sit next to them, or plainly and clearly told me that I wasn't welcome to sit in the vicinity. 


Wearing a T-shirt and jeans I was an obviously secular man and to them wasn't worthy of journeying alongside them. In those days, before the second Intifada, Palestinian labourers still earned a rust in and around Jerusalem and always rode at the rear of the buses never being welcome to sit anywhere else. Rather like the women of Ashdod these days and elsewhere on religious buses, the religious males sit in front and women and
'goyim' are expected to go to the back. 


Back in 1997, faced with the prospect of a fight with the religious passengers, I decided that I would actually prefer to sit amongst the Palestinians than alongside those racist, warped individuals who refused to make space for me and joined the Palestinian builders on the back seat engaged in polite conversation for the duration of the journey.


As we move on to 2012 and look forward to good health and happiness for all in the year ahead, I can't help but  think that the actions of Israel's ultra-religious community and the threat they pose from within Israeli society, is no less a danger to the only democracy in the Middle East than the threats of missile attacks, both conventional and nuclear, form our Arab neighbours.