Time for Israel to allow buses on the Sabbath

[jtheb]

Walk around Tel Aviv on any given Saturday, and religious fervour is the last thing you'll encounter. The people vote with their sandal-clad feet, which carry them from grocer's shop to cafe to golden mile of sand without the slightest inclination to walk into a synagogue – and in a free country it should be their cast-iron right to do just that.
Yet the vagaries of a country defiantly defining itself along religious lines are disrupting the lives of millions of Israel's citizens every weekend, and there seems precious little the state is prepared to do about it.
In February, the Tel Aviv municipality approved a resolution to petition the transport ministry to allow public transport to operate in the city on Shabbat (the Sabbath), but the idea was rejected outright by the transport minister Yisrael Katz. This week, members of the leftwing Meretz party took the case to the high court, arguing that Katz is obliged by Israeli law to consider the proposal.
Given the secular character of the vast majority of Tel Aviv – whose roads heave with private cars round the clock, and whose beaches boast thousands of near-naked youths packed together like sardines every Shabbat – such a proposition seems hardly out of place. Yet the establishment is up in arms about the plans, and is mobilising its troops to prevent any change to the status quo.
Forbidding public transport on Shabbat is a decidedly hypocritical stance when everything from state TV to state FA-run football leagues to state-run public facilities are allowed to operate on Shabbat in direct contravention to religious law. Were Israel to rigidly enforce the laws of the Sabbath on its entire populace, there would be a revolution before the Shabbat siren could sound its first notes, as the government knows only too well.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisf...h-buses-israel

[Marianne]

I've been there, and after 3pm on Sabbat, there is no public transportation.. so if you need to go to the grocery store.. you need to do this before..

I agree, that they should allow transportation..

[jtheb]

This was the bit that surprised me

Forbidding public transport on Shabbat is a decidedly hypocritical stance when everything from state TV to state FA-run football leagues to state-run public facilities are allowed to operate on Shabbat in direct contravention to religion

[Marianne]

Originally Posted by jtheb

This was the bit that surprised me

Forbidding public transport on Shabbat is a decidedly hypocritical stance when everything from state TV to state FA-run football leagues to state-run public facilities are allowed to operate on Shabbat in direct contravention to religion

I wasn't aware of that John.. I stayed in Jerusalem.. there, all transport stops.. at 3pm and all stores close..