UTJ MKs Moshe Gafni, Yitzchak Pindrus and Yaakov Asher on Monday night submitted a bill to establish separate swimming hours for springs and nature reserves of the Nature and Parks Authority for 15% of the time, in addition to their submission of a bill to ban the entry of chometz in hospitals on Pesach.
In 2020, the Nature and Parks Authority tried to hold a pilot of separate swimming hours at the Einot Tzukim Nature Reserve but the Justice Ministry requested to freeze the pilot – on the grounds that the Authority’s legal right to dictate separate swimming hours be clarified.
The explanatory notes to the UTJ MKs’ bill state that at least 20% of the Israeli population of various religions avoid swimming in places that don’t have separate hours for men and women. As a result, this population experiences discrimination by being unable to visit or swim at sites that don’t have separate swimming hours. Moreover, the discrimination is worsened by the fact that in essence, it is “state-sponsored” discrimination since the nature reserves are owned by the state.
Labor chairman MK Merav Michaeli responded to the report by stating:: “Mr. Gafni, as much as I am happy to dance at your separate private event, that’s how much I’ll fight that you don’t turn our entire country into your private event. We won’t accept you taking us backward, not on the bus, or anywhere else. Another step in the halachic revolution that Netanyahu’s crazy friends are promoting under his auspices. He doesn’t care – that’s how it is when you have a private pool at home.”
(YWN Israel Desk – Jerusalem)
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One Response
“We won’t accept you taking us backward,….” so, discrimination against chareidim is called taking us forward – accommodating 20% religious people means going backwards?! If so we are really going backwards.