A shy eight-year-old schoolgirl has unwittingly found herself on the front line of Israel's latest religious war.
Naama Margolese is a pale, blue-eyed, ponytailed, bespectacled second-grader who is afraid of walking to her religious Jewish girls' school for fear of ultra-Orthodox men who have spat on her and called her a "whore" for dressing "immodestly".
After media attention to the young girl's plight, thousands are expected to protest at 6pm local time on Tuesday against gender segregation and violence against women at a rally in Beit Shemesh, 30km to the west of Jerusalem.
Mickey Rosenfeld, a police spokesperson, told Al Jazeera that they would deploy a large number of security forces for the march, following attacks on media and police on Sunday and Monday by members of the ultra-Orthodox community.