Israeli schoolgirl Naama Margolese unveils true face of ultra-Orthodox Jewish community

A little 8-year-old schoolgirl has unintentionally found herself in the middle of Israel’s latest religious conflict (scroll down for AP interview).

Naama Margolese is a second-grader who fears to walk to her religious Jewish girls school because of some ultra-Orthodox extremists who reportedly “hate” her for dressing “immodestly.”

“When I walk to school in the morning I used to get a tummy ache because I was so scared … that they were going to stand and start yelling and spitting,” the pale, blue-eyed girl said softly in an interview with The Associated Press. “They were scary. They don’t want us to go to the school.”
The girls school that Naama attends in the city of Beit Shemesh, west of Jerusalem, is on the boundary between an ultra-Orthodox neighborhood and a community of modern Orthodox Jewish residents, many of them American immigrants.

Beit Shemesh has faced for long the dissensions between the ultra-Orthodox, who form nearly half the city’s population, and the rest of the residents. And residents say the attacks at the girls’ school, attended by about 400 students, have been taking place for months.

However, after a local TV station reported about the school and interviewed Naama’s family, a nation-wide outrage emerged.

The televised images of Naama crying as she walked to school stunned dozens Israelis, elicited statements of outrage from the country’s leadership, triggered a Facebook page with more than 10,000 fans dedicated to “protecting little Naama” and a demonstration was held Tuesday evening in her support. As the case has attracted attention, extremists have heckled and thrown eggs and rocks at journalists descending on town. Source: Huffington Post

Video: Associated Press interview with Naama Margolese