At 8am, little girls carrying backpacks stuffed with books and lunchboxes greet each other with giggles and whispers as they wait for the security guard to unlock the school gates. All are dressed in compliance with the school's regulations: skirt to the knee or below; sleeves at least to the elbow. The youngest are six, the oldest 12: the age of innocence. But this has not protected these children from becoming the focus of a cultural, religious and territorial struggle between Jews in the city of Bet Shemesh, which many say reflects a wider battle across the country as the ultra-orthodox, or Haredim, grow in number and influence.
Since the state-funded religious-nationalist school of Orot Girls opened in new premises in September, groups of extreme Haredi men regularly gather at the gates, screaming "whore" and "slut" at the girls and their mothers. The demonstrators say they are dressed "immodestly"; that even girls as young as six should cover their flesh. When staff and pupils returned after recent holidays, they found a stink bomb had been hurled through a glass window, its stench of excrement and rotting fish putting a classroom out of use.
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