Opinion & Comment
Shabbos is Under Assault

To The Editor:

Shalom. Over the past few days the government and the Histadrut have unleashed a new kind of assault against Shabbas Kodesh, by insinuating that the Ben Gurion airport was closed last Shabbos (as it is every Shabbos), not because it was Shabbos, but as a purely political decision to prevent foreign airlines from taking 'unfair advantage' of El Al's not being allowed to fly on Shabbos to return thousands of passengers stranded by the recent Histadrut strike.

They deliberately did it in such a way to provoke maximum annoyance on the part of the passengers and the foreign airlines that the Histadrut deliberately 'abandoned' them over that Shabbos. In truth, it was the 2-day Histadrut strike earlier that week that seriously messed things up for these passengers, and for both El Al and the foreign airlines. The airport is always supposed to remain closed over Shabbos, except for life-threatening situations, which this was not.

I think this was a deliberate setup to allow El Al to start flying on Shabbos, choliloh, presumably to make it easier to privatize it.

Without commenting on the privatization issue, being closed on Shabbos has long been a big plus for El Al. Besides being a big kiddush Hashem making them worthy of Divine protection and blessing, it helped them to streamline their operations and make the airline very attractive to religious, and particularly chareidi passengers.

By being mechalel Shabbos, choliloh, they would lose these advantages, and many religious would switch to foreign airlines, so this should be fought as strongly as possible. Todah.

Sincerely,

Clifford Felder

Rechovot

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