I suggest New York Times Jerusalem Bureau Chief Jodi Rudoren put a sign above her desk that says, “one out of five Israelis is Palestinian.” Because she once again forgets this fact in an article about public buses on the Sabbath– “Push for Buses on Sabbath Sets off Debate in Israel.” The article goes on for 1,200 words, and does not quote a single Palestinian Israeli.
The story is actually somewhat interesting. A group of seculars and leftwingers want public transportation on the Sabbath.
“Public transportation is a necessity: I think it should be like electricity or water or gas,” said Omry Hazut, 27, who started the Facebook protest. “State and religion, this bond, is broken a lot of times, but only if you can afford it. If you can afford a car, you can pull the switch and start it on Saturday, but if you can’t, you won’t have any option of leaving your house.”
Right; everything grinds to a halt on the Sabbath in Israel and occupied Jerusalem. Rudoren quotes a few Jewish Israelis on this issue, on both sides, but she and Irit Pazner Garshowitz and Myra Noveck, who contributed reporting to the piece, do not talk to a single Palestinian to get their opinion about a), the inconvenience, because we’re talking about public buses, and b), how do they feel to have one day of their week shut down for another religion’s observance?
You don’t think she could find one Palestinian who wants to travel from Jerusalem to Nazareth on Saturday to visit family and can’t afford a car?
You don’t think she could find one Palestinian to say:
I don’t think too much of it, but every week I’m reminded that I live in a theocracy where someone else’s religion is in charge.
Rudoren is the new Golda meir with a slight variation.
There are no non Jews in the Jewish State.
Amazing how she manages to ignore those circa 1.5 million internal enemies of the State that lie-berman is always complaining about.
Btw , is Rudoren on her way to Nepal to tell us about Israel,s humanitarian efforts .
She can save herself a trip and thank the US instead of the zionist state; it’s easy to be a humanitarian with someone else’s money. If the zionist state didn’t get the steady mainline hot shot of cash from its sugar daddy/pusher Uncle Sam I doubt they’d be doing a lot on the humanitarian front. No one should be fooled by “humanitarian efforts”. It’s only a PR prop, and most importantly, you have to be human first. It’s amazing they’ll help dark skinned folk everywhere in the world, except in their own back yard. Those poor souls are being sent from the asylum they sought to certain death. Thanks Zionists!
Once again, this writer is working on the assumption that Rudoren is a journalist. She is not. She is a paid propagandist. Big difference. She doesn’t need reminding that Palestinians exist. She knows it full well. Her job is to obfuscate that reality whenever possible. If she must mention Palestinians at all, it is best they be nameless, faceless “others” that Jews must fear. To suggest that they are regular people who can be inconvenienced by the conventions of the theocracy in which they live is not her job.
She did find this rabbi: “Imagine if there was public transportation on the streets like on weekdays. We would not know it is Shabbat in Israel,” said Rabbi Aryeh Stern, one of Jerusalem’s chief rabbis.
Sure this one won’t create a spark any day of the week.
Palestinians are in fact essential to Sabbath observance in Israel, because they perform the role traditionally assigned to the “Shabbes goy” — the Gentile who does what Jews need doing on the Sabbath but are not allowed to do themselves. In any society there are functions that have to be seen to every day of the week, say in water management, and it is Palestinians who do those things in Israel. So a possible compromise on the bus issue would be for buses to run on Shabbat driven by Palestinians, though as past experience shows that does entail the risk of a Palestinian bus driver getting upset and running people over.