The rise of the Zionist Taliban

From Israel come reports of the rise of Zionist extremism, writes Peter Rhodes.

Ultra-orthodox Jews are demanding a ban on women singing in public. They also deface images of women on advertising billboards and throw human excrement at girls who do not dress to their standards of modesty. It is a trend which horrifies many ordinary Jews.

I had a foretaste of it more than 20 years ago in Jerusalem when I fixed an interview with an ultra-orthodox preacher.

He was wide-eyed with horror when I suggested we chat in a bar (they don't do alcohol) and outraged when he was offered a seat in our minibus next to a woman. In short, this uptight, difficult character had created a life based largely on taking offence at normal behaviour. "Holier than thou" does not begin to describe him.

The bad news is that he and his ilk are on the increase and their influence in Israel is growing. The people they really hate (with echoes of Monty Python's Life of Brian) are not the Palestinians or the Arabs but liberal Jews.

Millions of Israelis worked to create a thriving, secular democracy.

Now they find they are sharing their land with the Zionist version of the Taliban, and fear for the future.