Fundamentalist vs Secular Clashes Alive in Jerusalem
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Yesterday I posted an amazing piece over in Cultural Creatives, about Hamas forbidding the UN school in Gaza to teach about the Holocaust. I had no idea that the fundamental branch of Islam denies that the Holocaust happened, and therefore cannot be taught.
Today, the focus is on the religious-secular divide in Jerusalem. where Madonna wandered about on Monday. In Jerusalem for her “Sticky & Sweet” tour, Madonna is also attending a Kabbalah conference, dining with opposition leader Tzipi Livni and meeting tomorrow with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Besides the ongoing conflict between Israel and Gaza, inside Israel is caught in the worldwide web of fundamentalist and secular forces. The yelling and screaming is intense, irrational and often subhuman.
In a modest, recent Rosa Parks event, eight activists non-Orthodox Jewish men and women boarded the No. 40 bus, heading from the northern Jerusalem’s Ramot D into town. The six women sat in the front of the bus; the two men sat in back.
Stunned, some Orthodox women stayed in the back of the bus — where Orthodox Judaism says they belong — and others snatched a moment of elusive ‘freedom’ and moved to the front.
And the beat rolls on … Anne