Apartment for Rent - Not to Chareidim
According to Wikipedia, "Israel has broad anti-discrimination laws that prohibit discrimination by both government and non-government entities on the basis of race, religion, and political beliefs, and prohibits incitement to racism... racism in Israel refers to racism directed against Israeli Arabs by Israeli Jews, intra-Jewish racism between the various Jewish ethnic divisions (in particular against Ethiopian Jews), historic and current racism towards Mizrachi Jews, and racism on the part of Israeli Arabs against Israeli Jews."
However chareidi Jews are not recognized as a group that may not be discriminated against, and there is a lot of anti-chareidi discrimination.
"To our regret, discrimination against chareidim which is expressed in damage to property, alongside racism which is legally considered as crimes of speech, have become very commonplace," says Shai Glick, director of the Betzalmo Organization for Human Rights, going back a bit in time. "In the years of Corona, discrimination and racism expressed themselves more blatantly, both having become a national scourge. It was especially sharp when a great majority of complaints were reported to the Unit for the Fight Against Racism in the Ministry of Justice, of which 56% came from chareidim who were attacked on racist grounds and filed their complaints as a result of our public campaign telling them to report such incidents to us."
This has accelerated fourfold in comparison to the previous year when the percentage of complaints of incidents against chareidim was only 12%. Today as well, with the Corona behind us, and there are fewer reasons to blame upon chareidim who 'spread the disease' etc., the gradual rise in the scope of complaints continues, being expressed in an annual report which analyzes the phenomenon according to sectors, but 100% of the complaints were dismissed since there is no law forbidding racism against chareidim."
Glick provides a recent example which disturbed broad sectors, even those who have no religious connections. A resident of Beit Shemesh, at the beginning of Chanukah wished to purchase a walker and made up with the seller in Modi'in a time to come and inspect it. He kept the appointment, bringing his son along but when the door was opened and the husband of the woman who had spoken to him on the phone saw that the prospective buyer was chareidi, he made it absolutely clear that "we don't do business with chareidim" and slammed the door in their faces.
In a phone call which reached the two when they were already in their car, the woman suggested that she would leave the walker in front of the door for him to take it, without letting him examine it first. The chareidi man refused such a demeaning transaction, saying that he was not interested after all.
"This is a clear instance of discrimination," explains Glick, "which could have entangled the sellers in a court case, but the prospective buyer decided to forego a legal battle."
The director of Betzalmo maintains that the chareidi public is the biggest target of discrimination and racism, as we have seen in hundreds of instances these past years, especially during the Corona period, when it was subject to a strong wave of hatred.
The story of the egg discrimination even got to a court case but was dismissed by the court. It involved a man who came to a supermarket of a company in Kfar Sava to purchase a supply of eggs to tide him over until after Pesach since there was talk about an upcoming shortage. He was treated shamefully with the words, "Get away from here and don't come back." The excuse: "We don't sell to chareidim." In the end, they allowed him one single tray of eggs, while other customers received as many as they wanted.
In other instances, chareidim were refused treatment in dental clinics as soon as the personnel realized that they were chareidim. Then there were certain hospitals which rerouted women before childbirth to wards reserved for Corona patients, automatically, arbitrarily and in an insulting manner. Their excuse was that chareidim are spreaders of the disease. Their manner was defined as racist and they were eventually forced to change this biased policy.
"The constant and tremendous incitement against the chareidi community in all the media, has an effect," says MK Rabbi Uri Maklev. "We once met with a group of journalists who had been swept up in the general spirit without looking at any of the facts, and after we presented them with the data that clearly falsified the lies that were being spread, they became more moderate. One of them was actually fired since he no longer helped to advance the poisonous anti-religious agenda of his employer."
How bad is the discrimination?
We had one case in the past year of a chareidi women who had applied to fill a publicly advertised position in a government office. She had a very impressive record from her work in the private sector where she filled senior positions, but the head of the unit was so against hiring any chareidi that he reworked the schedule of the whole office to make it unattractive to a chareidi woman. He had the whole office start work late and end late. He changed the schedule of 50 workers just so that he would not have to hire that one chareidi woman.
"There was a similar case of a Russian immigrant, a very accomplished mechanical engineer, who applied for a publicly advertised job in a private company. He passed a whole battery of tests and evaluations — until the final one which was a personal interview. Why was that? Because the manager suddenly saw with whom he was dealing: a chareidi Jew with a long beard. He told him to his face: `We do not want someone with a beard like yours.'
"It is important to realize that the chareidi community cannot live in many small settlement in Israel, because no one will sell them a house there."
