Gender-segregated gym to open in Tel Aviv, because of Arabs

Makor Rishon is reporting that the City of Tel Aviv has decided to open a fitness center that will operate in the format of gender-segregation, with separate hours or separate facilities divided between men and women. The goal was to have ti available to the Arab community, mostly from nearby Yaffo, and the Arab women won't come if it is a mixed environment.

Legal counsel for the city participated in a panel discussion on the issue of gender-segregation and announced this plan and explained that the city wants to include more communities and not automatically ban populations form participating because they have specific needs.

Mr Salman, the legal counsel for the City, explained that as he sees it, the city can operate such a facility because it is for the public but it is closed, whereas an "open" event, such as the outdoor concert that was at the heart of a dispute last year, is more problematic. When an event is in an open public space, it cannot be exclusive and has to be equally available to the broader public, but when an event is "closed" they can designated for specific sectors and communities and even operate gender-segregated.

Salman claims that the law allows him to operate such a fitness center just as it does a beach. There are separate beaches that the law allows to operate with a division of hours and days between men and women, with being open to the broader public on the weekends. I do not get the comparison because the beach is an open space, so how can this be allowed, yet the fitness center is a closed space, so I am not sure how that compares to the beach and how, with his explanation, the beach itself is allowed to operate like that.

Obviously this has attracted calls of hypocrisy, as when gender-separate events were planned for the religious and Haredi public they were fought tooth and nail, yet when planed for the Arab community they find ways to justify it..

I do not understand the justification in the difference between open and closed. Beside for that, other argument swe have heard in the past are also issues.

One such argument was "hadata", or religious coercion and imposing religious beliefs int he public sphere. II don't think this is an issue in this case because nobody feels imposed on or religiously threatened by the Arabs, as it is a different religion.

Another argument was public money support discrimination. This si an issue whether the considerations are religious or not, and it seems like this should be an issue here.

I have said many times that I think a way should be found to allow public monies and locations to be used for sectors of the population that have different lifestyles, without imposing on the greater public. I don't know what those ways are, but I think such ways should be found. Salman says this is a way to do this, but I do not understand his differentiation and how this can be significant enough of a difference to allow it here but not in the various other situations that arose this past summer. I am happy he found a way, and await to see if it passes the legal test, after someone challenges it. If it holds up, the religious public wanting separate seating concerts funded by municipal coffers will have some criteria to follow but should be able to get their events..

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