Israel has many walls, some say too many, one of those walls is also the most ancient one, the west wall of what was believed to be the Jewish temple in ancient times, the sole survivor of the brutal Roman destruction of Jerusalem as a response to the local disloyalty to Rome.
This wall has come to symbolize Jewish faith for many years, but the religious authorities, almost like anywhere else in the world, want to keep this place as their own and dictate to others how the place should be seen and treated. And so last week we witnessed an amazing site, Jewish women who want to pray and sing in the sight of the ancient Jewish temple being aggressively arrested by Israeli police, because this, somehow, offends the feelings of other people – most of them not even present on the site at the time.
The story is short and basic, orthodox Jews do not believe females have any place in public worship, they do not pray and they certainly do not put on them any of the distinctive Jewish clothing reserved for prayer – that is exclusively male. This does not end here, it seems that in Israel it is illegal to hurt the feelings of these people, so women can not dress the way they might want because someone else, living in a whole different place, is offended by that… WHAT?
A piece of religious clothing is restricted for male use only, in Israel, due to the request of religious authorities, and these women get abused for asking to do whatever they want to do for one hour per month, 11 hours annually total, because some people find that too much for their feelings, and they can not deal with it, and somehow the police goes along with this.
Nothing better to demonstrate the unholy grip religious authorities around the world have on normal regular good people, you can not do something because it offends someone who is not even there to be offended by it, they are offended by the idea of it – so your rights are smashed away at the idiotic aggressive back thinking beliefs of others, this can not be a good thing for Israeli society.
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