Every single time I board one of these Haredi bus lines, my blood boils. My hands shake. My jaw clenches. Because I know what's coming – that long, humiliating walk past rows of men who are (for some unknown reason) allowed to sit at the front of the bus.
Let me tell you what it actually feels like: It feels like acid in my stomach. It feels like rage burning up my throat. It feels like being treated like a walking virus, a piece of garbage that needs to be swept to the back where no one can see it. Every. Single. Day.
Don't you dare tell me this is about "religious sensitivity." Don't you dare tell me this is "tradition" or "cultural respect."
You want to know what goes through my head during that walk of shame to the back? I think of the people who survived hell itself to help build this country. I think about the promises of equality that Israel was founded on. And then I think about how I'm still being told to go sit in the back like a good little girl because my mere existence is apparently too provocative.
The hypocrisy makes me FURIOUS. We're supposedly this beacon of democracy in the Middle East, this modern nation of innovation and progress. Yet here I am, in 2024, being herded to the back of a public bus. Here I am, watching young girls learn that their place in society is to be hidden away, to be ashamed, to accept second-class status with a smile.
Every time I walk down that aisle, I feel the ghost of Rosa Parks sitting on my shoulder, probably wondering what the heck happened to "never again." Because this is happening again. Right here. Right now. On public buses paid for with our tax money.
You know what's worst? The silence. The acceptance. The way people just look down and pretend it's normal. The way even some women defend this garbage, calling it "voluntary." Voluntary? Let me tell you about the stares, the muttered comments, the social pressure that makes it feel about as "voluntary" as a gun to the head.
I am not your problem to solve. I am not a threat to your piety. I am not a walking temptation that needs to be quarantined at the back of the bus. I am a human being, a citizen, a woman who is sick to her stomach of being treated like a disease.
So no, I won't calm down. No, I won't be reasonable. No, I won't accept this "separate but equal" garbage that wasn't okay in 1950s America and sure isn't okay in Israel today.
To every person who enforces this system, who defends it, who turns a blind eye: ENOUGH!
This ends when we say it ends. This ends when we stand up and say ENOUGH. This ends when we refuse to walk to the back, refuse to be silent, refuse to be invisible.
I am not your shame. I am not your problem. I am a woman, standing at the front of the bus, and I'm not moving.
Deal with it.
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