These days, as part of the public transportation campaign in Bnei Brak, a video clip is being shared on behalf of the Ministry of Transportation, the Municipality of Bnei Brak and Ayalon Highways, that includes men only. Today (12.11.2020), we joined Na’amat and the Israel Women’s Network in appealing to the Minister of Transportation, the Municipality of Bnei Brak, and the CEO of Ayalon Highways, in protest over the wrong and deliberate policy excluding women, young women, and girls in an obvious, bold way. We further demanded from the ministry, municipality, and company that moving forward they will effectively include women in their publications, in an equal way to men, and avoid censoring or hiding them.
“The policy of censoring and hiding women and their likes is a wrong policy”, wrote Attorney Gali Zinger, Director of the Legal Department of the Israel Women’s Network. “This policy excludes and humiliates women, and sends a harmful and dangerous social message that the image of a woman in a video clip or photo is impure in the public arena. Hiding women from publications sends the population of women a message of inferiority, ignoring their existence and not recognizing their values and wishes. It should be mentioned that men are also harmed from their exclusion. [...] Haredi women, young women, and girls utilize public transportation in Bnei Brak just as much if not more than the men in the city, and deserve that public announcements include them and be directed at them, and that they are represented along with their needs [...] removing women from the public arena by not including them or hiding them from your publications is an extremist, wrong, and improper act, that effectively treats women as potential hazards for immodesty, and objectifies them as a mere sexual entity whose graphic representation could bring about an ‘impurity’ to the public arena”.