… in the Jerusalem Post.

Halachic terrorists harm three groups: They harm their victims, of course. They also do injury to the haredi community [from which they come], the vast majority of whom are law-abiding, God-fearing individuals with exemplary behavior. But they also harm the Jewish People and the Jewish state in general, projecting upon us an odious image of being intolerant, incorrigible and at war with one another.

Or as Efraim Halevy recently said, referring to out-of-control haredim: “Israel’s true existential danger comes from within.”

The main targets of these determined forces of reaction are women and girls – just as women and girls are the main targets of similar forces of reaction in places like Afghanistan. Women moving freely in the public world, thinking independently, pursuing an education – these provoke the most dangerous violence.

A letter writer in the Washington Post takes issue with a Ruth Marcus column about Israel’s haredim.

No woman in Israel is “forced to board public buses from the back and stay there,” as Ruth Marcus stated. There are several bus lines, servicing overwhelmingly Haredi communities, where there is a voluntary separation of the sexes — the wish of female passengers no less than of males. If a woman chooses to flout that convention, she is protected by law.

Flout. SOS likes that flout. Synonyms for flout, we’re told, include

mock – scoff – jeer – deride – gibe – scorn – taunt

It’s interesting that this writer considers acting in accordance with your country’s laws (which forbid gender segregation in public places) to be an expression of contempt.

Nor is the flouter at all protected by the law. No one will intervene when the men on the bus spit at her and the women call her a whore. The haredim on the bus don’t do laws; they do conventions which, if disobeyed, are being flouted and will get punished.

Just as Marcus says, Israel is becoming a land of cults, not laws. It’s pretty remarkable that there are people in this country willing to justify this trend.

The Talibanization of Israel proceeds. There are signs that the government might finally be ready to react against it.

Any significant measure will catalyze violent riots.

Habermas spells out precisely why he sees Europe as a project for civilization that must not be allowed to fail, and why the “global community” is not only feasible, but also necessary to reconcile democracy with capitalism. Otherwise, as he puts it, we run the risk of a kind of permanent state of emergency — otherwise the countries will simply be driven by the markets.

… [Why does Habermas take] the topic of Europe so personally[?]. It has to do with the evil Germany of yesteryear and the good Europe of tomorrow, with the transformation of past to future, with a continent that was once torn apart by guilt — and is now torn apart by debt.

… continues (background here), with Brinkley reporting that his Rice University students applauded when he returned to the classroom.

Young’s spokesperson failed to address his employer’s provocative behavior at the hearing, but assured everyone that the whole dustup had to do with “an attempt by an author to create a stir and sell books.”

UD thinks the real problem is that Young was not adequately briefed. People like Young think all professors are ivory tower haughties (Young actually used the phrase “ivory tower” in one of his spews against Brinkley) ripe for rolling by rough-hewn men of the people. Imagine Young’s surprise on discovering that some intellectuals can ratchet their rhetoric right down to the gutter if the occasion warrants. Not all intellectuals can do this; but it’s the job of Young’s staff to identify those who can.

… from the heart of one of the world’s most reactionary cultures.

Women are being ostracized and humiliated by a variety of means. I could mention intimate ritual laws that denigrate women ‏(but prefer only to hint at them‏). Astonishingly, women put up with them, ignore the humiliation, and with indefatigable self-persuasion − and with tolerance and patience stemming from generations of suppression − wipe their mouths and give thanks for the drops of rain that moisten them.

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Details.

… how to maintain gender segregation.

The scandal of the Israeli ultra-Orthodox.

What did he do? Whip it out?

“It’s an expression of ethnic pride and multiculturalism.”

Professor Samuel Heilman on the haredi practice of making women sit in the back of the bus.

A recent Columbia University graduate, Chavkin has uncovered a little bit of Israel right here in the USA.

Israeli women are already fortunate enough to be kept off the main streets, in the backs of buses, out of the newspapers, and in very special orthodox cases even under burqas!

In America, we are only beginning to see these blessings extended to our women – as with the erasure of Hillary Clinton’s face from a group photograph in a New York newspaper. But Chavkin uncovered the fact that we’ve also got a bus — a public service, subject to all applicable laws — that’s just like the Israeli buses! Women to the back, and if you don’t go, get ready to be spat on and called a whore!

It has already affected it. Some people, says Rachel Azaria, consider Jerusalem already “a lost city,” ruled by segregationist ultra-orthodox. They’ve succeeded in creating sex-segregated streets for an upcoming holiday; and of course many public buses make women sit in the back, just like Rosa Parks.

To tell women that they have to sit at the back of the bus, or that they have to stand in certain lines in the supermarket, or that the supermarket will be closed to women during certain hours goes against our beliefs … we will not stand for it.

All of this segregation, mind you, is illegal. Go to the Israeli courts, and they’ll obligingly rule again and again that you can’t do any of this in a democracy. But it doesn’t matter, because the haredim ignore the laws, and the police don’t enforce them.

Israel even has a national curriculum, because you don’t want a large, unemployable population. Opting out isn’t a legal option.

Only it is. The haredim opt out.

The larger picture here.

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An update; and an excellent idea:

Perhaps Haredi goggles should be developed. With picture recognition software these goggles would identify human females in the field of vision and replace them with convex pink patches (color could be selected by the user). Think about night vision goggles that show infrared as “false color”. This would allow pious men to walk anywhere, read illustrated newspapers (without female images cut out) without being disturbed, and without disturbing females. I would assume that in cases when women can fail to be recognized by the software they should look sufficiently un-exciting. With a “cautious” setting, all human figures with bare elbows and bare heads could be covered. With “most cautious” setting, the only visible humans would be properly dressed Haredi males.

… gets a fellowship to go to France and changes her mind about the burqa:

[A]ny feminist must realize the wearing of the burqa and niqab is something only women do. It may be grounded in centuries of tradition, but it’s blatantly sexist.

Muslim guys prance around Paris in super-tight jeans and slinky shirts. Why support something that only limits activities of women? That’s hard to support. Plenty of Muslims don’t.

… in which UD has played a small part, here’s Eric Goldman, a law professor at Santa Clara University, on recent events:

I know many folks get a thrill from watching Righthaven implode, but I must confess that I feel no schadenfreude. Yes, it’s fun (in a bloodsport way) to watch judicial benchslaps. Yes, of course, Righthaven has been a plague on our community, so having them driven out would be welcome relief. Yes, they have contributed to a nice body of defense-favorable precedent. Yet, using the powerful tools of our judicial system, Righthaven has imposed significant financial and emotional costs on hundreds of victims. I feel sad for the victims who have had to fight back for their rights at the peril of losing their homes, and I feel sad that we as a society have accepted a litigation system that allows a scheme like Righthaven to harm for ordinary well-meaning citizens trying to do the right thing. A judicial crushing of Righthaven is inadequate restitution for these victims, so I remain sad about the overall situation.

… in the New York Times. Across the page from Brooks, Paul Krugman takes up the same theme: Without a willingness to behave in a few non-self-serving ways, citizens of capitalist economies are going to bring their affluent democratic cultures crashing down around them. Krugman notes that between 1979 and 2005

the income of the very rich, the top 100th of 1 percent of the income distribution, rose by 480 percent. … In 2005 dollars, the average annual income of that group rose from $4.2 million to $24.3 million.

The claim that “the rich have a right to keep their money… misses the point that all of us live in and benefit from being part of a larger society. … [The wealthy presumably] have as much of a stake as everyone else in the nation’s future…”

(Krugman alludes to this Elizabeth Warren video.)

As to whether the wealthy feel as though they’ve got much stake in the nation’s future… Well, read Christopher Lasch’s The Revolt of the Elites… or The End of Equality by Mickey Kaus. It’s definitely not a slam dunk. Here’s Lasch:

To an alarming extent the privileged classes – by an expansive definition, the top 20 percent – have made themselves independent not only of crumbling industrial cities but of public services in general. They send their children to private schools, insure themselves against medical emergencies by enrolling in company-supported plans, and hire private security guards…. In effect, they have removed themselves from the common life. It is not just that they see no point in paying for public services they no longer use. Many of them have ceased to think of themselves as Americans in any important sense, implicated in America’s destiny for better or worse. Their ties to an international culture of work and leisure – of business entertainment, information, and ‘information retrieval’ – make many of them deeply indifferent to the prospect of American national decline.