I am trying to make sense of the latest brouhaha but having a difficult time with it - finding conflicting information and contradictory statements by those involved and different news sites reporting different details. Perhaps someone can help make sense of it.
It seems Minister of Sport and Culture Miki Zohar announced he is cutting funding to the proram Ruach Yisraelit, Israeli Spirit, and its subsidiary Shabbat Yisraelit because of their running of programs on Shabbos. Ruach Yisraelit seems, among other things, to run heritage sites around the country, mostly in the periphery, and one of the programs was to have these sites open on Shabbos with free entry. And when it was founded, in a spirit of equality, the same sites would be open on Sundays free for the religious public to benefit in the same way. The program was put in place by the Minister at the time being Chili Tropper.
Now it gets confusing. Zohar denies he is stopping the programs, just the government will no longer initiate it and wont fund chilul shabbos. He also said he wont fund programs that discriminate against large sectors of society (ie the religious that cant benefit from it) and that break the status quo.
The problem with this is that this was not founded by the last government but by the previous Netanyahu government, which Gantz was a member of of and in which Tropper served as minister founding this program. Additionally, all the religious parties supported it. Additionally, Amit Segals wonders why this is a chilul shabbos program that should be canceled as it minimizes chilul shabbos rather than increasing it, and it is operating on Sundays as well to offer equal benefits to religious people.
Zohar insists he is being defamed and his only change is insisting that the government not initiate such programs. The haredi parties seem to be praising him for this, but they voted in favor of the program back then. And then a bit later PM Netanyahu met with Zohar and basically told him to keep funding all programs, nothing changes, and Zohar stressed the only change is that the government wont initiate any such programs but the organizers will do it themselves, with the funding. Which is weird. What organization funded by the government has its activities organized by the government - that isnt how it ever works so I dont know what this whole thing even means.
And what about funding sport such as soccer/football, which has been a debate for a long time, among other cultural activities that happen on Shabbos? Is this one being singled out just because it was started by Tropper? Could the organizers sue for being singled out while funding continues to other programs that operate on Shabbos? And what about Ministers and Deputy Ministers driving government-issued and funded cars on Shabbos?
very unclear. I am not sure what happened, what he is trying to do and what the policy is going to be. And with the way Zohar spoke about the status quo, how the last government broke it and he is going back to it, how are the religious members of the government, constituting about half of the government, if not more, ok with this continuing now under Netanyahu's orders?
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