[Nodrog]

Originally Posted by Phang

This is a fair point, but essentially our government and that of the US isn't taking every opportunity to provide political, economic and military support to the governments of North Korea, Zimbabwe, Myanmar, the Sudan or whoever.

The level to which people care about Israel/Palestine still seems to greatly exceed the level to which they cared about apartheid/chechnya/australia-aboriginees, or whatever other similar thing you care to mention.

Actually, Egged's Mehadrin buses are state-subsidised...

I dont think this is a problem really - if youre going to have the state subsidising something (which you shoudnt blah blah blah) then I dont think theres any intrinsic problem with it providing services which can only be used by a section of the population, provided that equivalent services are available to everyone else. For example, if we ignore the fact that state-run education shouldnt exist in the first place, I dont think theres anything necessarily wrong with the government running single sex schools. If these religious extremists are being forced to fund these buses via taxation, theres nothing wrong with them demanding that they are provided buses which suit them, regardless of how irrational their beliefs are.

it is comparable. It isn't as bad, but few things are: the point remains that an almost-secular government is more or less supporting an entertainingly awful policy of discrimination at the behest of the religious extremist lobby. Sounds pretty comparable to me!

The Israeli government is hardly almost secular, but that isnt the point. The difference in magnitude between women not being allowed to sit at the front of some buses, and what goes on in some of the countries near Israel, makes any comparasion between them absurd. Furball's original post claims "Suffice it to say that in the final paragraphs of that BBC News article you might think you're reading about Pakistan, not Israel." Here's some random women related pakistan stories, for reference:

http://web.amnesty.org/library/Index/engASA330181999
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/new...cle1414137.ece

Originally Posted by Hebdomad

You acted over-the-top because we're all grown-up. Cool.

Pornography is a bad example anyway. Western society (including non-orthodox Jewish society) has a predilection to focus on women as sex-objects. How is that different from Islamic society's predilection to focus on women as anything but?

Because the effect that being viewed as sex objects has on the day-to-day freedom and lifestyle of women isnt even remotely equtable with the way women are treated in the more extreme Islamic countries. Because pressure that is imposed as a result of social conformity is always capable of being transcended in a way that pressure applied through the direct application of force cannot be. Amongst other reasons.

[Edit] To make things clear, the predilection to focus on women as sex-objects is sexist, as far as I'm concerned. Women aren't just a pair of tits etc. And both Islam and Western society use social norms to enforce their respective perspective on what women should and should not do: show their body and definitely not show their body.

Both attitudes may be sexist (although I'd argue that they arent), but this doesnt make them comparable. The anti-gay marriage debate in America is obviously motivated by an underlying homophobia, but claiming that this is equtable with Iranian law carrying death sentences for male sodomy is just silly.