A shy eight-year-old schoolgirl has unwittingly found herself on the front line of Israel’s latest religious war.
Naama Margolese is a ponytailed, bespectacled second-grader afraid of walking to her religious Jewish girls’ school for fear of ultra-Orthodox men who have spat on her and called her a “whore” for dressing “immodestly”.
After significant media attention to the young girl’s plight, thousands came out to protest on Tuesday evening against gender segregation and violence against women at a rally in Beit Shemesh, 30km to the west of Jerusalem.
Mickey Rosenfeld, a police spokesperson, told Al Jazeera a large number of security forces would be deployed for the march, following attacks on media and police on Sunday and Monday by members of the ultra-Orthodox community.
Protesters held signs at Tuesday’s protest saying, “Free Israel from religious coercion” and “Stop Israel from becoming Iran”, but members of the ultra-Orthodox community were nowhere in sight during the rally.
Ahead of the gathering, President Shimon Peres had urged the public to attend.
“The demonstration today is a test for the people and not just the police,” Peres told a gathering of Israeli ambassadors.
“All of us … must defend the image of the state of Israel from a minority that is destroying national solidarity and expressing
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