Navigate to News section

Israeli Modesty Squads Fighting Miscegenation?

London writer says ultra-Orthodox groups have state OK to keep Jews, Arabs apart

by
Ari M. Brostoff
October 01, 2009

The ultra-Orthodox “modesty squads” that regulate behavior in some Israeli neighborhoods aren’t just enforcing a fundamentalist lifestyle in their own communities—they’re also serving the purposes of a state-sanctioned anti-miscegenation agenda, op-ed writer Seth Freedman argues in London’s Guardian. He points to a piece that ran in the Times of London last week, which reported on organized groups of ultra-Orthodox men dedicated to finding mixed Jewish-Arab couples and harassing them. Some of those groups, including Fire for Judaism, whose members cruise around a Jerusalem-adjacent settlement and have been known to chase “problem couples” in their cars, work with police, according to the Times. “What is sauce for the religious goose is sauce for the secular gander,” Freedman writes. “That the police would even deign to co-operate with such poisonous and prejudiced characters and their fantasies of racial purity is indicative of the malaise gripping certain sectors of Israeli society, both at street and state level.”

Ari M. Brostoff is Culture Editor at Jewish Currents.