Bet Shemesh In The News

While some say there is no such thing as bad publicity (commonly attributed to P T Barnum), Bet Shemesh has recently tried to prove that false. Bet Shemesh just won't let itself get out of the news.

Two recent interesting news tidbits from Bet Shemesh:

1. Rabbi Dov Lipman is threatening to sue Mayor Moshe Abutbol for libel. Under a recently passed law, one can sue for damages of libel without the need to prove any actual damages (that concept does not make sense to me, but that is the new law), though the potential award of such a lawsuit in such a situation is limited. (source: Jpost)
   
   Lipman's threat is based on the recent interview Abutbol gave to AMI magazine. In the interview, Abutbol said, "he fought against every building that went up to house haredim, night and day.” Abutbol also said in the interview that he “condemns Dov Lipman and his cohorts who have been a thorn in the side of Bet Shemesh for years.”
   
   Lipman explains he is not anti-haredi but only anti-extremist. he has supported building for haredim, but the situation with the extremists is the problem. While supporting building for haredim, he wants building for all sectors, and not just for haredim.
   
2. Mayor Moshe Abutbol was at a Knesset committee meeting debating the issue of exclusion of women in the public sphere. Abutbol got into an argument with Minister Limor Livnat about the famous sign outside a shul in a haredi neighborhood that asked women to not congregate outside the shul but to cross the street. It became clear to Abutbol that the minister and others were not really interested in hearing explanations but were only looking to make pronouncements for the media, so he got up and left.
   
3. Kiryat Malachi is going through issues of it's own. A little while back the mayor nixed any possibility of building housing projects for haredim, with the explanation that he did not want to turn the city into another Bet Shemesh. Supposedly that is a growing trend among mayors around the country, and that is another victim of the Bet Shemesh violence. However, in Kiryat Malachi it seems to be a bit more than just looking at what Bet Shemesh turned into - it looks like they have problems of their own with discrimination.
   
   It was recently revealed that in an area in Kiryat Malachi the residents all conspired and signed an agreement that nobody would sell his or her home to an Ethiopian.
   
   Pretty nasty, isn't it?
   
   This morsel created a stir, resulting in a Knesset committee debate over the discrimination. After all was said and done, Mayor Moshe Abutbol went to the committee heads MK Danny Danon and to the director of the Absorption Ministry and requested that they direct immigrants from Ethiopia to Bet Shemesh.
   
   Abutbol explained that in Bet Shemesh Ethiopians are very welcome. He said the city invests a lot of resources into the absorption of the Ethiopian community. Abutbol pointed, as an example, to the recent construction of a community center for the Ethiopians. With 25% of the city being new immigrants, Bet Shemesh is a city of absorption, Abutbol said. (source: Mynet)
   
   I think that was a very nice gesture on the mayor's part. I do not know what Danon will do with it. On the one hand he got into a fight with Abutbol when his committee came to Bet Shemesh to consider the issues in Bet Shemesh and potential aliya directing immigrants to the city. On the other hand, everybody already knows that the mayor loves Ethiopians so much that he even opened a nursery school just for them! (that was humor, in case anyone might misunderstand)