Jerusalem District Court Justice Arnon Darrel accepted the position of the Beit Shemesh Municipality and rejected the case brought by Minister of Education Shai Piron and the ministry. The court rejected a ministry request to issue an injunction to block the chareidi girls from using some of the school’s empty classrooms.
The case refers to a Beit Shemesh City Hall decision to allocated a number of empty classrooms in a Beit Shemesh secular school to a chareidi girls school, leading to widespread opposition among the city’s secular residents, the Ministry of Education and Minister Piron.
Therefore the chareidi girls from the Mishkenos Daas School will be permitted to remain in the classrooms in the secular Safot U’Tarbuot School in Beit Shemesh. While the school is large enough to accommodate 500 students, the student body among the secular community only numbers 144. Beit Shemesh Mayor Moshe Abutbul decided to give some of those empty classrooms to the chareidi girls since they were without alternatives.
The court’s ruling is a significant blow to Piron, who refused all requests to permit the girls to remain amid the realization there are not enough classrooms in the chareidi sector.
The court ordered the ministry to abide by a City Hall request to have the attorney general’s office mediate a solution.
The court however did not hide its disapproval of the handling of the matter by Mayor Abutbul, citing how he instructed contractors to enter the school like thieves in the night to install sheetrock partitions instead of filing official requests with the ministry as should have been the case. The court told City Hall officials that such behavior is unacceptable and it only serves to increase conflict in the city.
It is likely the latest decision will serve as additional ammunition for residents of Beit Shemesh who would like to see the city divided to put the growing chareidi population on the other side of the border.
(YWN – Israel Desk, Jerusalem)
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6 Responses
It was prima facie open and shut case
BUT ..ex Justice Theodore Orr infamous off the cuff declaration half a decade ago (trans.) that more than the facts alone “we decide according how it will bring to our eventual goals”
begs the question
What do the ‘enlightened’ whom the justices represent,
paln to gain from the decision?
A bigger festering wedge between the traditional and ultras?
Can there anything be “open and shut” in Israel?
MK Dov Lipman of the Yesh Atid party has denied a claim by a MK Yaakov Litzman that he had issued a death threat against him during a heated Knesset session. The US-born Lipman told The Times of Israel that the exchange, which was said to have taken place Wednesday, “didn’t happen” as UTJ MK Litzman had described it.
“It’s actually a non-story,” he declared.
It had been reported that following a stormy Knesset debate discussion about tax breaks for new homeowners – during which the charedi MKs were said to have insulted Lipman repeatedly, referring to him as “[Finance Minister] Yair Lapid’s charedi” – Lipman approached Litzman and asked him to stop the name-calling.
“He came over to me and said that if I don’t stop mocking him, he’ll do something to me. I saw it as a death threat,” Litzman said. “I think he is unstable. I will file a complaint and the Knesset will take care of it.”
It is most encouraging to see that at least one judge in Israel places common sense before anti-chareidi hatered.
Lets keep on davening now in Elul for more successes agains the Zionist devils.
The building can hold 500 students and there were only 140 studying there. The Chareidi girls didn’t have any building to go to. Surely it was not their first choice either. The city looked for an area to put caravans as a temporary solution but there was no room and therefore no choice. Why shouldn’t the chiloni school be shared?
#5. This is true, but it wasn’t done properly. If you sneak, people fear the worst. The same thing could have been accomplished is a more professional and responsible way.