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.”
Israel’s Vile Anti-Miscegenation Squads [Guardian]
Ari M. Brostoff is Culture Editor at Jewish Currents.