Women Israel

In pursuit of a lunchtime yogurt, Ronit Fahima crossed a narrow street from the Education Ministry, where she works, to a corner grocery. Dressed in a sleeveless pantsuit, she was ambushed by a group of ultra-Orthodox women who swaddled her in a blue cloth and told her she was indecent. "May your home be destroyed!" they cursed as she ran. "Disaster will befall your family!" As Fahima tells it, a veritable riot broke out between ministry employees and ultra-Orthodox men, until police arrived.

In pursuit of a lunchtime yogurt, Ronit Fahima crossed a narrow street from the Education Ministry, where she works, to a corner grocery. Dressed in a sleeveless pantsuit, she was ambushed by a group of ultra-Orthodox women who swaddled her in a blue cloth and told her she was indecent. "May your home be destroyed!" they cursed as she ran. "Disaster will befall your family!" As Fahima tells it, a veritable riot broke out between ministry employees and ultra-Orthodox men, until police arrived.

JERUSALEM -- Rocked by a scandal involving birth-control treatments for Ethiopian Jews, Israel's health ministry issued new guidelines on the use of the injections known commercially as Depo-Provera. In a recent letter to the country's four HMOs reported Sunday , Ron Gamzu, director general of the health ministry, instructed gynecologists against renewing prescriptions in cases where the patient does not fully understand the treatment's implications. The ministry's new policy comes in response to a controversy exposed last month by local investigative journalist Gal Gabbay, who reported that Jewish Ethiopian women awaiting emigration to Israel in transit camps in Ethiopia were coaxed into the treatment with little medical explanation and led to understand this was a condition for moving to Israel.

The reference by one of the women to Israel as the spoiled child and Arabs as abused ones makes one wonder at their perspective. With the Kuwaitis and Saudis, running around in BMWs with unlimited pocket money does not qualify them as abused children. Hiding in safe rooms with gas masks and, since 1947, running into split trenches at impending terrorist raids hardly qualifies Israeli children as spoiled. The real tragedy is the damage this is doing to all the protagonists.

Judy's, the Van Nuys-based clothing store chain, is holding discussions about selling the company to an unidentified, out-of-state clothing concern in a $31-million deal. As part of the agreement announced Monday, the Israel family, which controls 78% of Judy's stock, will not sell its shares to another company for 110 days. The unidentified party has tentatively agreed to pay at least $6.71 per share of Judy's stock, according to Marcia Israel, Judy's founder and chief executive.

Siding strongly with Israel in its current conflict with Palestinians, former United Nations Ambassador Jeane J. Kirkpatrick told more than 400 Los Angeles Jews on Sunday that the survival of their religious homeland has never been more threatened. "Israel's life is more in danger today than it has ever been since its founding," she told members and guests of the Women's pro-Israel National Political Action Committee at a reception in her honor at a Van Nuys home.

Israeli delegates to the U.N. women's conference Friday condemned South Africa's apartheid policy as abhorrent and anti-Semitic. On the fourth day of the conference marking the end of a decade dedicated by the United Nations to women, delegates also debated resolutions equating Zionism and racism. Israeli delegate Naomi Chazan told a news conference: "It is imperative to separate Zionism from racism. . . . Israel and the Jewish people abhor apartheid.

Some broadcast and cable programs contain material included in the public school curriculum and on standardized examinations. Here are home-viewing tips: * Today--"The Candidate" (AMC 3-5 p.m.) Jeremy Larner's Oscar-winning screenplay about a fictional California election campaign makes the process so clear that the recent book "Guide to Family Movies" by Nell Minow suggested it as a primer on the subject for kids 12 and up. Robert Redford stars. Rated PG; Available on video.

When public buses rumble to a stop in some of Jerusalem's religious neighborhoods, women often dutifully enter by the rear door and sit in the back, leaving the front for men. There's no law requiring the women to do so, but those who don't risk verbal taunts and intimidation. It's a curious sight given Israel's history as an international trailblazer for women's rights. The country produced one of the democratic world's first female heads of government with Golda Meir's election in 1969.

Hoping to bring about a thaw in frozen peace negotiations, Israeli President Ezer Weizman met with Yasser Arafat on Tuesday night and said afterward that the Palestinian Authority president had agreed to renew security cooperation with Israel. Arafat asserted after the two-hour session at the Erez crossing between Israel and the Palestinian-ruled Gaza Strip that "both of us should maintain security for both peoples. . . . We are totally committed to this issue."