Jerusalem Magistrates' Court Judge Eylata Ziskind ruled Wednesday that Shlomo Fuchs, a hareidi man who was criminally charged after he used a derogatory term toward a female passenger, could no longer use public transportation. She removed all other limitations placed on him except for the deposit that he had to pay for his release after his arrest.
Fuchs, a resident of Givat Yaakov, was charged with sexual harassment three weeks ago after he allegedly hurled the term "prutzeh" [a woman of loose morals -ed.] at a female soldier who boarded the 49a "mehadrin" bus line intended for hareidim and insisted on sitting in the section set aside for men. He said that the charges against him were exaggerated and based on falsehoods.
Fuchs was immediately arrested and charges of sexual harassment were filed against him the very next day. He was released to house arrest.
Judge Ziskind was not impressed by evidence presented by Fuchs' defense attorney, who sought to demonstrate that the soldier had planned a provocation. On the day before the incident with Fuchs, the soldier had posted a link on her Facebook page to an article about a provocation staged by another woman, who behaved indecently on a bus, and wrote "hahahah… that is my idea."
"In the circumstances of the incident, I do not see that the Facebook matter that was brought up before me changes the evidentiary situation, even if that young woman did publish a comment on the phenomenon and decided to board a mehadrin bus," Ziskind wrote. "The reaction she got was inappropriate, in any case."