autopsies on Shabbos

Minister of Health Nitzan Horowitz today announced that the forensic institute Abu Kabir will operate on Saturdays as well now. According to reports, the Arab community leaders requested from Horowitz that Abu Kabir operate on Saturdays to process their dead to prevent delays in burial.

This government is willing to drop status quo issues that were considered sacrosanct until now, so it is no surprise that Horowitz decided to go ahead with this decision.

Another no surprise was the response of Haredi MKs Moshe Gafni and Uri Maklev (both UTJ). they both issued statements condemning the decision due to the desecration of Shabbos in a non-pikuach nefesh situation.

Interestingly, the Haredi MKs are also against autopsies in general, and do what they can to fight autopsies whenever possible and work out arrangement whenever possible to avoid them (at least for haredi and religious bodies), yet when they issued their statements condemning the decision, they criticized the chilul shabbos and not the autopsies. It makes me wonder which is worse - the autopsies or the chilul Shabbos. I gues sbecause they are not Jews the chilul shabbos is worse as I would assume autopsies on non-Jews is allowed (though I dont know that for sure) - but once they are doing the autopsies on Shabbos, who is to say they won't also do autopsies on Jewish bodies on Shabbos? The crazy riots every time a frum jewish body is up for autopsy relative to the lack of rioting over chilul shabbos leaves me with the impression that autopsies are worse but maybe they are just more shocking and not actually worse. Tzarich Iyun, I guess.

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A solution, perhaps, would be to have the autopsies on Shabbos done by Arab forensic experts, if they exist (I have no idea) or train some if they don't, especially since it is for the Arab community's benefit. But nobody is looking for solutions...

I remember Yair Lapid once responding to Haredi criticism abotu chilul shabbos when he said something like get used to it, we don't work for you. Well, the government is supposed to work for the people, but the entire premise here is that they are not interested in what the Haredi MKs think or say...

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