Labor chairwoman Merav Michaeli announced on Motzei Shabbos that the Tel Aviv light rail will run on Shabbos and claimed that the decision is within her authority as transportation minister and that no government will be able to revoke her decision.
“I am happy to announce that starting next year, the light rail in Tel Aviv and the surrounding area will also operate on Shabbat,” Michaeli said in an interview with Channel 12. “This is my decision – and that’s how it’s going to be.”
She later claimed that her move is completely unrelated to her current election campaign. “It’s not related to the elections at all,” she said. “It’s in my coalition agreement with Yair Lapid. I wanted to maintain the coalition and therefore I haven’t done it in the last year and a half. Now there is no coalition to maintain.”
“There is a civic duty to the Israeli public. No government will reverse any decision regarding public transportation on Shabbat because it hurts the weakest populations,” she claimed.
It should be noted that according to recent polls, the Labor party is faltering and may not even garner enough votes to enter the next Knesset.
UTJ Uri Maklev responded to Michaeli’s announcement by stating: “It would have been preferable for her to first answer about her failures in the management of her ministry – drivers sitting for many hours in huge traffic jams, dysfunction in public transportation, the damage to the periphery and price increases throughout the country, and the delays in work in all areas of the ministry. Unfortunately, while the ministry is in a state of dysfunction, the Transportation Minister chooses to divert the discussion from the crisis on the roads by attacking Shabbos.”
UTJ MK Meir Porush said: “The Transportation Minister of the state of Tel Aviv, who has brought the state of public transportation to a new low, promises that if she remains in her position, she’ll focus on the one thing she’s good at – destruction. History proves that whoever starts up with Shabbos fails. B’ezras Hashem, on the 7th of Cheshvan, Michaeli will also become history.”
“Transportation Minister Merav Michaeli isn’t interested in the traffic jams which millions of citizens suffer from each day,” Noam party chairman Avi Maoz said. “Transportation Minister Michaeli is also not interested in the fact that hundreds of thousands of citizens have given up the option of using public transportation during her term. There is one thing that very much interests her – turning the State of Israel into a state of all its citizens. This is the only goal for which she is willing to fight, even at the cost of the suffering of Israeli citizens.”
(YWN Israel Desk – Jerusalem)
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17 Responses
A silver lining – these trains will result in fewer people being mechalel shabbos.
This should cause anyone who thinks Israel is a Jewish country to think again.
The land will spit us out.
Does anyone know when the line is expected to start running at all (i.e. during the week)?
Jerusalem observer: Eretz Yisroel stopped being a Jewish country in 1948.
Yawn!
The land will spit us out
Elector will be only one spit out. Shame. Always Jewish state. Now some fools must leave
In other “news” grass is green!
Daven
did somebody thik otherwise? she is a am haaretz,a left socialist and she will not be elected any more.
ion the so called jewish goisch state.
Someone should outside the train station with a hug, a hot bowl of cholent with a huge slice of kishka and a kind word and show those who dont keep shabbos the beauty of this holy day
“wHy D0nT YuO m0Ve tO thE JewWeeSh staTE”
Which Jewish state? The one that allowed 500,000 non Jewish Russians to come and intermarry with Jews RL? The one that has pork shops all throughout Tel Aviv and Bat Yam? The one that allows public transportation on Shabbat?
I would love to get an actual statistical census of how many Israeli Jews fast Yom Kippur
The root of Merav Michaeli’s arrogance and the cause of her dislike of religiosity are to be found in her family’s background.
She harbors anger and resentment toward the religious in general and the Charedim in particular because of what she perceives to have been the ingratitude of the late Satmar Rebbe zt”l to her grandfather Rudolf Kastner. Through wheeling and dealing and the taking and offering of many bribes, Kastner had helped the Rebbe and over 1,600 Jews to be transported temporarily to Bergen-Belsen and then to safety in neutral Switzerland.
Some say that the Rebbe’s dismissive remarks about Michaeli’s grandfather were inspired by Kastner’s not-so-secret collaboration with the Waffen SS. Many Hungarian Jews despised Kastner because of his relationship with the SS.
For example, the mother of the legendary Hebrew poetess and parachutist Hannah Szenes zt”l accused Kastner of deliberately giving away her daughter’s position to the Nazis ys”v and of not lifting a finger to intervene in her behalf when she and a group of young Jewish fighters were caught at the Yugoslav-Hungarian border trying to join up with other partisan units. Refusing till the end to give the Germans ys”v any information about the other partisans, she was brutally tortured for days and then executed by firing squad.
In the end, Kastner (Merav Michaeli’s grandfather) was assassinated by the right-wing Stern Gang for the betrayal of his fellow Jews and for collaboration with the enemy. Past that, Merav’s mother Zsuzsa remembered getting stoned by other children to and from school on a regular basis. Many of the other children had survivor parents. The survivor community ostracized the Kastner family for what Rudolf had done during the war. The harassment became so bad and so frequent that Rudolf’s wife (Zsuzsa’s mother and Merav’s grandmother) had a nervous breakdown.
This is the nightmare from which Merav Michaeli comes. How could anyone of such background emerge healthy and well-adjusted? What Michaeli should realize is that it’s not all about her. That she uses Shabbat observance as a cudgel by which to take vengeance on the communities that revere people like the Satmar Rebbe zt”l is sad but it is not surprising.
And the death treats start pouring in.
Leave it up to the “righteous” ones to act like animals!
Jerusalem Observer,
And what are you doing exactly to help make it more of a Jewish country?
Instead of letting these lefties win, we have to fight back!
Halachically, it’s better to take a train than drive!