Retired Israeli judge sparks firestorm with criticism of former Miss World’s religious head covering

Likud MK Sharren Haskel said she would wear a “turban” for a week, urged other women to follow her example, and went on television wearing one to talk about it.

By World Israel News Staff

A retired judge who caused a social media firestorm when he criticized the presenter of an Independence Day ceremony for her religious head covering and tight dress last week refused to apologize despite the backlash.

Acting as co-host of the ceremony, Mrs. Linor Abargil is best known for winning the Miss World beauty pageant in 1998.

Not long before winning the crown, she had been raped. Since then, she has become a global advocate in the fight against sexual violence.

The state ceremony, Wednesday night, was the annual event on Mount Herzl in Jerusalem marking the conclusion of Israel’s Memorial Day and beginning of Independence Day.

Mrs. Abargil wore a fashionable style of head covering worn by religious married women.

Former president of the Beersheba Magistrates’ Court Oded Alyagon mocked her appearance in his Facebook post, ridiculing her “multitiered turban” as a sign of religiousness, while at the same time, wearing a “tightly-bound” dress.

The retired judge sardonically suggested that while the head covering was meant to play to the religious audience, her tight dress was meant to “please the hearts of our secular brothers, and apparently also to create an atmosphere of unity among the people.”

The outpouring of anger over the judge’s post centered around his ridicule of religious practice, though also his sexual innuendo, in the age of the #MeToo movement and concerning a woman who had been raped and is a symbol for the empowerment of women.

Women, and even some men, took to social media, posting photographs of themselves wearing similar head coverings, even if they don’t normally cover their hair.

Most prominent was outgoing Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked. In addition, Likud MK Sharren Haskel said she would wear a “turban” for a week, urged other women to follow her example, and went on television wearing one to talk about it.

The judge’s comments were condemned by the spokesperson’s office for the Israeli court system, which called his post “humiliating.”

However, Mr. Alyagon refused to back down in an interview Friday on Channel 13 television.

“She was raped, that’s correct, it is sad, it’s regrettable, but it’s not relevant. That’s not why you have a woman present a program like that,” said the retired judge.

“I think that when a woman, on the one hand, wears a wimple like that on her head, and, on the other hand, walks around with a tight dress that is very sexy, this is hypocrisy,” he added.

Linor Abargil