When Looking for Votes, Clinton was Comfortable with the Haredi Traditions

Hillary Clinton is widely reported to have “expressed shock over growing discrimination against Israeli women. She mentioned cases of IDF soldiers leaving during performances of female singers and the fact that females sit in the back of buses in certain places in Israel. Clinton said that some of these phenomena reminded her of Iran.” Funny, that when looking for votes in her successful senate bid she was comfortable to visit the most gender separated and most secluded Hasidic Shtetl in the US (and very likely on earth), and during her primary campaign her surrogates marched in Williamsburg, with Satmar leaders, in a gender separated group.

Haredi Jews have the rights to live their tradition in their neighborhoods. When campaigning for President Clinton understood it, as evident in the Jerusalem Post article “Clinton campaign marches to haredi Brooklyn beat .” According to the reporter, “female campaign staffers had to be sent to the back of the line of marchers so that there would not be any untoward mixing of the sexes. And then volunteers wearing Hebrew Hillary pins worked fast to remove the blue Stars of David stuck on their signs, lest they be confused with Israeli flags, a definite no-no in the anti-Zionist Satmar enclave.” This group included very hi-level Clinton supporters, like disgraced US Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-New York), who “shouted through a bullhorn.”

BTW, it’s interesting to read in that piece that “Orthodox Assemblyman Dov Hikind, a longtime friend of Clinton's, said that he supported her work in the Senate, he added he would not be taking time to return from Albany to cast a vote in the primary on her behalf. "I'm not that enthusiastic to rush back to vote for one or the other," said Hikind. "With Clinton, it's the old story. What does she really believe in? She is measuring how the wind is blowing.” He also said that many in the Orthodox community had not forgotten Clinton's kissing Suha Arafat while she was first lady. "They can't get over the kiss, which is ridiculous in my view." Now, with the benefit of the hindsight and his outspokenness against Obama, should he have backed Clinton more strongly? It is also interesting that Simcha Felder said that he would be voting for Obama in "protest" of the racially-tinged tactics employed by the Clinton campaign in South Carolina last month.

When vying for State and National office, Clinton understood that Haredim are entitled to live their life according to their traditions. Why are Jews in Israel any different? Why should they be forced to hear Kol B’Isha, or why shouldn’t they be entitled to voluntarily have ed seating arrangements on busses.

The Secretary of State Clinton owes us an explanation, rather an apology.