June 19th, 2008

The lawsuit before Israel's high court alleges that several women have been harassed, humiliated, taunted and even physically assaulted on the buses. In December a Canadian Orthodox Jew was on a non-Haredi bus line en route to the Western Wall, Judaism's holiest site, when she was assaulted by an ultra-Orthodox man for refusing to move to the back of the bus. She has signed on to the suit.

"She was physically hurt, beaten very hard," said Orly Erez-Likhowski, an attorney with the Israel Movement for Progressive Judaism, who is leading the legal fight against the Ministry of Transportation and the Egged bus company, a quasi-private line heavily subsidized by the state.