Particularly appropriate for this year 😔 😢

A great op-Ed from Hamodia:

El Al’s offer of a free round-trip ticket to Europe for every passenger on board the ill-fated Flight 002 from New York to Israel last week shows that the airline doesn’t get it.

At issue was El Al’s failure to respect Shabbos and its abysmal treatment of chareidi travelers, who make up a significant portion of its air traffic, especially on the Tel Aviv-New York line.

The pilot and the flight crew disrespected both Shabbos and the intelligence of its chareidi passengers when they said they were heading back to the terminal to allow those who feared not reaching Israel by Shabbos to disembark, and then proceeded to the runway to take off (without ensuring that those passengers were safely buckled up).

Compare the behavior of El Al in this regard to that of United Airlines. The latter’s Flight UA 84, which was also bound for Israel on that snowy Thursday night, agreed to let its shomer Shabbos passengers off and arranged for their suitcases to be taken off the plane and delivered to them.

If United Airlines can show respect for Jewish passengers who are concerned about, chalilah, desecrating Shabbos, is it too much to expect the same from a Jewish-owned airline in Israel?

Instead of accepting responsibility for falsely accusing chareidi passengers of “attacking crew members” and announcing that it would call the police on them, El Al management made do with a pareve “apology,” stating that the airline “sees it necessary to clarify again, as stated in a press release on Nov. 19, that it did not blame the religious, secular, or chareidi public in the events reported.”

Judaism teaches that teshuvah starts with viduy, acknowledging wrongdoing, and that is glaringly absent here.

Even more infuriating is the airline’s statement hailing the behavior of its flight crew. “The El Al management backs and appreciates the air and ground crew members who operated on this flight in an admirable manner.”

Which part was admirable? The failure to leave enough time to get from their Manhattan hotel to the airport in snowy weather?

The failure of pilots and flight attendants to speak truthfully and respectfully to passengers?

Or maybe it was the refusal of flight attendants to serve chareidi passengers, as a childish form of “revenge” for insisting on straight answers about the plane’s ability to arrive in Israel in time for Shabbos?

Or the failure to reserve enough rooms for shomer Shabbos passengers who would be stuck in Athens for Shabbos?

Moreover, the “apology” took more than a week to issue, as if there were ever any doubt as to whether it was called for. It’s clear from the wording and timing of the El Al statement that it was looking to put out fires, not assuage hurt feelings.

El Al is no stranger to Shabbos. It has signed two different agreements with the Committee for the Sanctity of Shabbos, the body that is chaired by Rabbi Yitzchak Goldknopf, and carries out the instructions of Gedolei Yisrael in all matters pertaining to Shabbos observance in the public domain.

The last agreement, signed in 2007, says that El Al will not fly its planes on Shabbos. And yet Flight 002, after dropping off its passengers in Athens, proceeded to fly to Israel on Shabbos.

The religious traveling public has every right to assume that an airline like El Al will show sensitivity to its needs, foremost among them Shabbos. If mistakes were made and the flight crew arrived late, there should have been an honest, respectful exchange between the flight crew and the passengers. People should have been given the option of getting off the plane and spending Shabbos in New York. They should have been told up front that there was no way the plane would make it on time to Tel Aviv and that arrangements were being made for them in Athens.

The flight crew should have gone from passenger to passenger to see who needed a room for Shabbos in Athens, and should have assured passengers that Shabbos meals would be provided and that Chabad would be on hand to ensure a proper Shabbos experience.

Instead, the flight crew and the pilots were condescending in their treatment of both Shabbos and their chareidi clientele.

At this point, El Al needs to reestablish trust with the chareidi public. It must show that it cares enough to never put people in a position that they have to worry about violating something that is so precious to them.

The way to go about that is first, to issue a genuine apology, accepting full responsibility for its behavior, and second, to accept the request of the Committee for the Sanctity of Shabbos to move up the times of planes leaving New York on Thursday evening, making a repeat of the Flight 002 debacle less likely.

The chareidi public wants to continue flying El Al. But only if El Al shows that it wants them as passengers.

Two wrongs don’t make a right. While I’m no fan of flying so close to Shabbos, in no way does that justify ElAl repeatedly lying to their passengers, then turning around and lying about their passengers.

SHOCK VIDEO: Border Policeman Sprayed Pepper Spray Into The Crowd At Kever Rashbi

Finally, some sense:

WATCH: Noted Lakewood Philanthropist Dr Rich Roberts Slams Anti-Vaxer Movement; Forbids Them From Attending Chol Hamoed Carnival

Alternative Medicine in Halacha: a Review

Life-Threatening Coalition Attempting to Form in Lakewood, New Jersey: Tens of Thousands at Risk

Wow, Joseph is anti-guns? Did not see that coming.

Mentsch1:
You’be said before that you believe the second amendment was intended to be a check on an authoritarian government. How far do you think that should go? As others have pointed out, to provide a realistic counter-force to the US army would require legalizing things like tanks, anti-aircraft missiles, cruise missiles, fighter jets, and possibly nuclear weapons…

Does anybody really believe that a semi-automatic, or that apparently legal gizmo that turns a semi-automatic into a full-fledged automatic, is really necessary for hunting or self-defense? How about the 47 guns that this guy apparently owned? Any legitimate use for this stuff?

Can’t we admit that we as a society have gotten carried away with this?

Curiosity:
The sad truth is that there was no good way to stop this attack.

Outlawing guns wouldn’t have helped because… ? (Not suggesting we should outlaw all guns, which is anyways probably impossible without a constitutional amendment, just trying to understand your point.)

Those turning this into a gun issue are just standing on the graves of the victims to try and push their agenda down other Americans’ throats.

This is by far the most prevalent reaction to suggesting more gun control in response to a gun-caused tragedy: “Stop politicizing the tragedy, just mourn it”. And I really just don’t get it. I mean, is suggesting that we fight terrorist in response to terrorism also politicizing terrorism? Should we just mourn and do nothing? Is suggesting a possible way to discourage drunk-driving in response to a drunk-driving tragedy politicizing the tragedy?

Isn’t the logical reaction to a tragedy to both mourn the tragedy, and try to make sure this type of thing doesn’t happen again?

ubiq:
If guns were nearly as regulated as cars I’d be fine with that.

That would be a good start.

Looks like the police go caught on video going one step too far even for the Israeli politicians, and now due to public outcry some small measure of justice is being served. From (the hardly anti-Zionist) Arutz Sheva:

Police officer indicted for brutality against haredi man
Policewoman hit haredi man three times in the head, grabbed his head and knocked him to the ground.

Prosecutors filed an indictment against a policewoman who is accused of assaulting a haredi protestor in January. The move comes after police received condemnations from across the political spectrum for the alleged brutality against haredi protestors on Sunday.

The policewoman is accused of using excessive force against a haredi demonstrator at Jerusalem’s Kikar HaShabbat, a central square in the haredi Meah Shearim neighborhood. The policewoman had been dispatched to the scene following reports of burning tires and garbage.

After seeing a haredi demonstrator shouting at another policewoman, she hit him three times in the head, grabbed his head and knocked him to the ground. After the incident, the policewoman recorded a false action report in order to conceal the attack, telling supervisors the protester attacked her and that she had only been defending herself.

The Police Investigative Unit (Mahash) also decided to try her commanding officer for using unlawful force.

The indictment comes after videos came to light documenting police officers using excessive force while breaking up a haredi anti-draft demonstration on Sunday. Clips showed police punching and kicking haredi demonstrators and throwing protestors to the ground unprovoked. One clip showed a police commander purposely breaking a demonstrator’s glasses with no apparent provocation.

I become very frustrated when people blame, or place responsibility on, the system. What’s the system? Is it the community’s selfless people who are already doing more than they’re able to do, with less funding than is needed to succeed? Or is it the people who are lamenting that the system isn’t doing enough?

R’ Shmuel Gluck of Areivim

, I did hear that there is a tradition going back to Rav Chaim of Volozhin that Jews will never be persecuted as Jews in America

I find that very difficult to believe. Where’d you hear that?

Middle of watching a truly disturbing video from RealClearPolitics about the White Nationalist/Supremacist incident… Quite scary to see so many angry & armed people marching to chants of “Jews will not replace us”, the Nazi chant “Blood and soil”,

One particularly remarkable quote from the scumbag who arranged this thing: “I have a pistol, I go to the gym, to become more capable of violence. I hope somebody even more capable come along, somebody like Donald Trump, but who doesn’t give his daughter to a Jew” (I really can’t do justice to the malice and disgust that his tone conveyed – you have to watch the video to really get a feel for it).

Other quotes from the riot include: “this city is run by Jewish communists and other criminals”, from a guy wearing Daily Stormer (neo-nazi website) t-shirt.

Thank hen there’s a couple of shots of bloodied bodies laying on the street following the White Nationalist/Supremacist terrorist attack.

All followed by Trump saying that he condemns violence “on both sides”…

Remember, never say “it can’t happen here…”

Truly sobering.