What Happened Over A Year Ago
A year ago the entire country was concerned about the plan to build the new emergency room in Barzilai Hospital in Ashqelon. The start of construction was being delayed, as graves had been found on location, and Haredi groups were fighting against digging them up.

The Haredi community came under fire for its opposition to the plan, with such claims as "they are concerned more about the dead than the living". We were told how urgent it is that construction get under way immediately, the south was under intense rocket fire, with potential for getting worse, and they needed to prepare for the possibility of mass casualties, which coul donly be done by building the new emergency room right away.

Eventually the Haredi approach was rejected, and the government decided to approve the construction plan. They used a blitzkrieg to clear the ground of all graves immediately, again under the guise of the urgency of the matter.

Moshe Gafni In Knesset
Yesterday, UTJ MK Moshe Gafni stood up in the Knesset and strongly criticized the media and the MKs who had fought so strongly for the construction plan a year ago. (source: Ladaat.net)

MK Moshe Gafni said:

Over a year ago the ground shook when graves had been found on the site of the Barzilai Hospital in Ashqelon, and as a result of this the protected emergency room was not built, despite the fact that the hospital is on the front lines of the southern front close to the Gaza Strip where rockets, Kassams and Grads are falling. Everyone was enraged that the Haredim are not allowing them to build. 

They said Haredim do not care about  pikuach nefesh. They attacked the haredi public for not allowing the construction to begin. I screamed in the media and in the committees that they are not building not because of graves and Haredim, but because the Ministry of Finance is not letting them.

I have a long list of articles that were published with headlines declaring the Haredim find more importance with the dead than with the living. Deputy Health Minister Yaakov Litzman presented an alternate plan that would allow the construction without needing to dig up the graves. The alternate plan was rejected, and Litzman was vilified. This is the first health minister that is shaking up the system. Secular health ministers previously did nothing on behalf of the hospital, and specifically by him was there a wild attack against the haredim that the dead have overcome basic logic. Within days all the graves were removed.

I waited to see the next day, after the removal of the graves, the tractors on site starting to build. After all, it was a great pikuach nefesh. Where are the MKs who screamed back then? Where is MK Zevulun Orlev? MK Rachel Adetto? MK Yoel Hasson? Everyone screamed PIKUACH NEFESH! Now, a year and 3 months have passed and not a single grain of the hospital has been built. What happened? Is there no longer a southern front? The dangers have not gone away, they have gotten more serious! It was obvious nobody was intending to build the hospital. It has become clear once again that all the energy of the hilonim and national religious is not pikuach nefesh, but simply the desire to attack the haredim. It has been mroe than a year and there has not been a word, or even half a word, in the media.

I think that if we want the hospital to be built, the haredim will have to plant a fictitious grave and announce there are graves and one cannot remove them. There is no other way to get everyone worked up, unless it is made into a haredi issue. There is a limit to hypocrisy. Where is the pikuach nefesh everyone was screaming about? The hypocrisy and the lies screams out to heaven.

That is a great speech by Gafni, and he makes a great point.

The only question I have is why they would make a big deal about such a thing? If they never intended to build the emergency room, why start the whole fight? just to remove a few ancient graves? What was the purpose in the first place? the result I understand - turning it into a haredi issue to heat up the conflict and get it done, but what was the original intent?