Tzipi Livni is poised to become Israel's next prime minister - but ultra-orthodox newspapers in the Jewish state are refusing to publish her picture for reasons of religious modesty.

Only about 600,000 of Israel's 7 million population are haredi, or ultra-orthodox, but they pack a strong political punch and include key officials including cabinet ministers and the mayor of Jerusalem.

No haredi paper will publish Livni's picture, said Avraham Kroizer, a public relations adviser to the incoming premier: Graphic artists will blur the faces of women that do make their way into pictures that the papers want to use. They will also blur pictures of television sets or other items deemed improper to be seen by the wider haredi public.

One ultra-orthodox paper also said it would not be using Livni's name Tzipi - short for ‘Tziporah' which means ‘bird.'

We might write "Mrs. T. Livni" or just "Mrs. Livni," but the name. Tzipi is too familiar. It is not acceptable to address a woman using her first name, especially when she goes by a nickname, said a senior editor at Hamodia, the oldest ultra-orthodox daily.

In Israel's ultra-Orthodox Jewish community, where the rule of law sometimes takes a back seat to the rule of God, zealots are on a campaign to stamp out behaviour they consider unchaste.

They hurl stones at women for such sins as wearing a red blouse, and attack stores selling devices that can access the Internet.

In recent weeks, self-styled modesty patrols have been accused of breaking into the apartment of a Jerusalem woman and beating her for allegedly consorting with men.

They have torched a store that sells MP4 players, fearing devout Jews would use them to download pornography.

These breaches of purity and modesty endanger our community, said Elchanan Blau, defending the bearded, black-robed zealots: If it takes fire to get them to stop, then so be it.

Many ultra-Orthodox Jews are dismayed by the violence, but the enforcers often enjoy quiet approval from rabbis eager to protect their own reputations as guardians of the faith, community members say.

There are eyes and ears all over the place, very similar to what you hear about in countries like Iran, says Israeli-American novelist Naomi Ragen, an observant Jew.

Israeli police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said the modesty police are not an organized phenomenon, just rogue enforcers carrying out isolated attacks.

A 17-year-old who moved to Israel from New York five years ago said she was hospitalized after being attacked with pepper spray by a crowd of men outraged that she was walking down a Jerusalem street with boys.

They can burn in hell, said the girl who lives in Beit Shemesh, a town outside Jerusalem where the vigilantism has been particularly violent. Walls of the neighbourhood are plastered with signs exhorting women to dress modestly - spelled out as closed-necked, long-sleeved blouses and long skirts. The state, catering to religious sensitivities, subsidizes gender-segregated bus routes that service religious neighbourhoods.

Lipa Schmeltzer looks and sounds every inch the popular ultra-orthodox Jewish singer that he is. He sings in Yiddish. He dresses in the clothes of a Haredi Jew and all of his song lyrics come from the scriptures.

Yet some say Schmeltzer's music, and that of others like him, is indecent and unfit for public consumption.

They are leading the public astray and are causing a great negative influence on the young generation, says Rabbi Efraim Luft, head of an ultra-orthodox organisation in Israel called the Committee for Jewish Music.

Supported by leading Haredi rabbis, Rabbi Luft has drawn up a black-list of musicians and bands - music that he says that is not kosher and cannot be played at ultra-orthodox weddings or public events because of its decadent nature.

What Rabbi Luft objects to so vehemently is not just contemporary, western music - rock, rap or pop - but the use of modern instruments and beats in the tunes of orthodox singers like Lipa Schmeltzer: The main part of the music should be the melody. Percussion should be secondary. They should not bend notes electronically and should not use instruments like electric guitars, bass guitars or saxophones in Jewish music.

Menahem Toker, an award-winning disc jockey, who was dismissed from a radio show under pressure from Haredi activists, warns the policy could backfire: In Jewish Orthodox culture there's no cinema, no theatre, no television. The only thing we have is music. We are the same, orthodox, people but if they don't find an alternative they'll lose the young people - they'll go to non-kosher shows and they'll have lost the next generation.

A company responsible for advertising on the Egged bus company has refused to place a political advertisement on Jerusalem city buses showing female candidates for the city council, so as not to offend the haredi public.
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The advertisement rejected last week by the Canaan advertising company, which is charged with advertising with the Egged bus cooperative, includes the portrait of two  women and a man running for city council on a joint religious-secular list called Wake up Jerusalem-Yerushalmim. The municipal elections will take place on November 11.

A spokesman for the company stood by the rejection of the ad. All advertisements are subject to the approval of the Egged censor, Canaan company spokesman Ohad Gibli said: In order not to offend the sensitivities of a certain public, certain criteria have been defined regarding the content of advertisements. Pictures of women cannot appear on buses that go through haredi neighborhoods, Gibli said.

Egged spokesman Ron Ratner said the bus company was never asked about advertisements with the portraits of women running for the city council, and would never have nixed them: Egged never received a query on this issue and would never have rejected such an advertisement of a public figure so long as it was positive, modest and respectable, and did not hurt public sensitivities. The Egged spokesman said he thought the whole issue was a PR ploy since the would-be city councilors never contacted Egged on the issue.

It is very sad that in Israel of 2008 women suffer such brazen discrimination, which is absolutely unacceptable, said Wake up Jerusalem-Yerushalmim spokeswoman Meirav Cohen, whose portrait was one of those appearing on the banned advertisement.

In the meantime, the ads in question have gone up on bus stations, which are the responsibility of another advertising company.

State prosecutors in Israel are arguing the case of a woman who they say was attacked in June by an ultra-Orthodox 'modesty patrol.' The verdict is expected to help define the legal parameters of religious vigilantes.

When Michal opened her apartment door one Saturday night in June, she was expecting to find a client for her hair design business.

Instead the Israeli divorcee who left the Orthodox fold some three years earlier found several ultra-Orthodox Jewish men. They threw her on the floor, gagged her, kicked her all over her body and questioned about her relations with men, according to official accounts.

After they beat her for at least 10 minutes, they warned her this was just the beginning and told her that if she continued to live there, she would be killed.

State prosecutors filed charges in August against a 28-year-old man accused of being paid $2,000 by a vigilante organization or modesty squad active in the religious Jerusalem neighborhoods of Mea Shearim and Geula for helping perpetrate the attack.

Prosecutors say the goal of the group, dubbed the Haredi modesty patrol, is to inflict community norms and conventions regarding modest attire and comportment in ultra-Orthodox, or Haredi, neighborhoods.

Among other things, the organization acts to fulfill its goals by using threats, violence and other offenses, the charge sheet said.

The judge, according to a local media report, said she believed that this particular defendant was not motivated by ideology and appeared to be a hired hand.

Michal said: If I was doing something that was not OK, God has enough ways to punish me. They don't have to take the law into their own hands. Who made himself God's policeman? Who has God given the right to come and beat someone in his name?

After keeping a relatively low profile for decades, modesty patrols have attracted growing international attention since 2006, when a U.S.-Israeli woman was beaten by several men for refusing to move to the back of a bus on a line that was not designated as segregated.

Rabbi Shmuel Pappenheim, a spokesperson for the Eda Haredit, a prominent ultra-Orthodox communal organization, described the formal and informal types of modesty patrols.

Informal patrols, he said, can involve residents who act on their own accord when they see something inappropriate. If someone in his neighborhood . . . ruins her children, dresses immodestly, or if she brings boyfriends home . . . he will do whatever he does to try to get rid of her. Formal Haredi organizations carry out the orders of rabbis to restrict improprieties, such as pornography.

An Israeli bus, travelling near predominantly Palestinian East Jerusalem, is pelted with stones that smash windows and startle passengers.

The violence is part of an unholy war in which strident elements of the ultra-Orthodox community in the Mea Shearim neighbourhood are trying to force Israel's leading bus company – and, by extension, Israeli society – to defer to their strict religious teachings and sensibilities.

The latest intimidation campaign is over demands that buses segregate men and women. In the view of some ultra-Orthodox Jews, segregated seating, with women entering separately through the rear door and sitting at the back, is vital to uphold their stringent traditions stipulating modesty and prohibiting physical contact with members of the opposite sex.

Secularists say the push for sanctity on the buses is part of a larger effort to transform Jerusalem into a kind of Tehran.

Menachem Kenig, head of a committee pressing for segregated buses, says Israel's leading bus company, Egged, is in effect forcing religious people to sin. The one place where men and women are forced to be together is on the bus. People are crowded in, men and women push up against each other. There are sudden stops and sharp turns and men fall on the women. This really angers us, it is a violation of the concept of modesty that is at the basis of the ultra-orthodox community.

But Laura Wharton, a secularist member of the Jerusalem city council, says the attempt to force a new segregated bus line is outrageous and extremist, adding: It is humiliating to be sent to the back of the bus.

Egged temporarily suspended service on the disputed line after stone attacks on several buses last week. Egged, which has a monopoly on bus services in Jerusalem, says it will not change the disputed line into a segregated one because secular passengers use it too. It runs segregated lines where nearly all passengers are ultra-Orthodox, a spokesman said.

Police officers were attacked by a haredi mob after being dispatched to the ultra-Orthodox Beit Yisrael neighborhood in Jerusalem to tend to a woman who was assaulted by vigilantes of the modesty patrol. Haredim protest in Jerusalem.

When the law enforcement officials arrived at Rehov Admon, haredim began to congregate and throw stones at the officers. The police car was slightly damaged, but no officers were hurt.

The modesty patrol, an all-male vigilante group which has been active in the city's haredi neighborhoods, has been linked to numerous acts of violence over the years in their attempts to ensure the city's haredi residents conduct themselves in accordance with the conventions of their ultra-Orthodox lifestyle.

Israel's Supreme Court has issued a ruling permitting the segregation of men and women on some buses serving ultra-Orthodox Jewish communities, but only if the passengers agree.

Court spokeswoman Ayelet Filo says the approval is for a trial period of a year.

Ultra-Orthodox practice forbids men from touching women, except for their wives. Men and women are separated in public. Recently on two bus lines serving their communities, women were instructed to sit in the back.

Human rights and women's groups objected, filing a suit with Israel's Supreme Court. The court ruled that the arrangement is legal as long as it is voluntary.

There have been several cases of women complaining that male passengers verbally abused or assaulted them when they refused to move back.