There is an age-old debate about whether the world is a golem, or whether the public is not stupid and cannot be fooled. The answer, apparently, is complex.
There is a public that is like a 'world=golem', and there are those who examine things with independent thinking and do not follow empty slogans.
The way in which public discourse is conducted in our country indicates a growing tendency among certain elements to see the public as a herd of fools, for whom shouting slogans is enough to make them join the chorus.
Where did the questions go?
Look at the outcry (coordinated and orchestrated, it should be said) that arose following the publication that the Haredi parties had sought in coalition negotiations to amend the law in a way that would allow events to be held with women and men separated. 'Iran is here,' 'religious coercion,' 'state of Halacha,' 'exclusion of women,' 'submission to the Haredim—these are the slogans we heard in response to the publication.
Because that's how things are these days.
Strategists at party headquarters and publicists serving a host of women's organizations and the like pass out message sheets, in which interviewees and respondents are asked to repeat several mantras over and over again.
The message pages say: Insert 'Iran' in every second sentence, say 'state of Halacha' over and over again, raise your voice against 'religious coercion', cry out that there is 'exclusion of women' here, and conclude with the crushing sentence before us 'shameful surrender to the Haredim'.
The assumption is that if the channels of public discourse are flooded with these slogans, they will be accepted as truths, and then the public will simply roll them on, without thinking for a moment whether there is any truth in them. Because who delve into the essence of things these days?.
In a normal world, the media would be the one that should be asking the right questions.
Where is the religious coercion in the bill that seeks to allow For the religious public The right to hold public events in segregation? Who exactly is being forced upon? And how did an event that has room for both men and women become 'exclusionary for women'? Or maybe the opposite is true, and the puzzling prohibition on holding events in segregation is what excludes observant women from a series of events they would like to participate in?
Return to sanity
Events have always been held in segregated settings for the religious and ultra-Orthodox public, until legal activism arose, through which a certain worldview is attempted to be imposed on the general public. And so an official at the Ministry of Justice began to act out of hyperactivity, sending letters to local authorities prohibiting them from funding segregated events.
Religious cultural events were canceled, and civil rights organizations did not rise to cry out about the theft of the Hersh sheep from this public.
The media, which was supposed to be outraged by the injustice, joined the chorus and continued to echo the false slogans. Now go and try shouting the truth that the king is naked while a whole choir admires his magnificent royal clothes...
The right to hold events in segregated settings should have been guaranteed long ago. Observant Jews are not second-class citizens in the country. They too are allowed to hold cultural events in a way that is consistent with their values and lifestyle.
The prohibition on funding such events is coercion. Amending the law is not a 'surrender,' but a return to sanity.
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