In our country, people argue everywhere, and this week the clashes were concentrated on public transportation. Arguments over seats on buses and planes have swelled into the hottest news items.
Just yesterday, 13's reporter Neria Kraus got into an aerial argument with ultra-Orthodox Jews who refused to sit next to her on the flight, Guy Lehrer sent two representatives from the "Pipeline" system to the buses in tank tops and hidden cameras (Roni Aviram and Riva Rapoport), and News 12 also sent investigative reporters.
Send researchers to find the next network scandal, photo: from "The Pipeline"
"We set out to examine what is happening in the mixed cities and neighborhoods – along lines where secular and ultra-Orthodox Jews immigrate," Aviram explained. For three days they moved around on buses, documenting haredim blocking seats with bags, others gently offering to consider men's dignity, a few throwing one comment or another. Like a quest to find the next network scandal.
"It takes courage in your situation, to sit in front," one driver told them, and at one stop they were spit on by an ultra-Orthodox lady who compared them to terrorists. "There were other pictures as well," Lehrer tried to dispute the findings, but that didn't help balance the bleak picture he conveyed. And anyway, who will watch TV if they broadcast regular trips in which nothing happened.
Shaming is not the solution
Therefore, it is not a representative sample, but quite the opposite. The journalists from "The Pipeline" focused on specific routes – in Ashdod, Beit Shemesh and Jerusalem – on buses where friction recently took place that went viral. Channel 12 News did the same trick, sending female researchers to the same problematic lines, and then broadcasting the exclusion under the cover of self-righteous doubt, a storm-provoking doubt.
Buses have become the new subject of controversy, photo: Oren Ben Hakon
To call these investigations a thorough examination, and to point through them to a change in attitude in the public sphere, is wrong. They are more in the direction of seeking provocation in order to label and paint Haredim in generalizing and black colors.
This moves women – who suffer unjustified discrimination – from a persecuted element to a persecuting and aggressive one. Such a revolution will not eliminate the problem or solve it. As evidence, MeToo has not succeeded in creating a safe world for women either. Deterrence and shaming are not a solution, just as provocation is not the way to get to the final stop.
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