Miriam Shear

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Miriam Shear (c. 1960) is an American-Israeli woman who, on November 24, 2006, on a five-week vacation to Israel, was allegedly attacked and beaten by a group of Haredi Jewish men (an ad hoc "modesty patrol"^[1]) on her way to pray at the Western Wall while riding a bus in Jerusalem. She refused to give up her seat and move to the back of the bus, after a disagreement as to whether she should sit separate from the men. The case is still being investigated.

While Egged Bus Cooperative does operate sex-segregated "Mehadrin"^[2] bus lines within Israel, the route Shear rode was a publicly-funded non-segregated line. The bus driver contends there was no violence, but that he did see a crowd around Shear and stopped the bus to inform passengers that his line was not sex-segregated. Egged's Mehadrin routes have come under heavy criticism since the incident, being compared to former racial segregation in the United States^[3]. Shear has been compared to African-American icons Rosa Parks and Sammy Davis Jr. since the incident, for refusing to give up her bus seat.