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Clashes erupted yesterday between police and several hundred ultra-Orthodox Jews from a town near Jerusalem who are campaigning for men and women to be segregated, an AFP journalist said.
Israeli police had stepped up their patrols in Beit Shemesh following unrest sparked by discrimination against women imposed by a radical fringe of the town’s religious Jews.
Several demonstrators were taken in for questioning after police and journalists were roughed up and insulted by ultra-Orthodox men telling them to “clear off,” the journalist said.
There were also shouting matches between ultra-Orthodox and secular Jews.
Beit Shemesh residents showered police and television crews with eggs and also set fire to the contents of refuse bins.
Several placards urging segregation between men and women that had been removed by police were later put back by protesters.
Earlier, police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said a man from Beit Shemesh had been arrested over an assault on Sunday on a TV crew filming a sign instructing women to cross the street to avoid walking past a synagogue.
Other signs posted in an ultra-Orthodox neighbourhood instructed women to dress “modestly” in long sleeves and calf-length skirts.
The Haaretz newspaper said that the cameraman from commercial station Channel Two was thrown to the ground and his sound recordist grabbed by the throat in the attack by ultra-Orthodox men.
Other journalists were also attacked and a police car stoned.
“A male was arrested and is being questioned in connection with the incident which took place on the Channel Two team,” Rosenfeld said.
“Municipal inspectors have been working in the street taking down posters... Police have stepped up patrols in Beit Shemesh.”
The violence in the town west of Jerusalem came after a wave of incidents elsewhere in Israel in which women have been compelled to sit at the back of segregated buses serving ultra-Orthodox areas or get off, despite court rulings that women may sit where they please.
Women’s rights activists say that the ultra-Orthodox—around 10% of the population—have become increasingly radical over gender segregation and are winning concessions that harm women.