Next week is Yom HaShoah, and on its heels comes very quickly the next week Yom HaZikaron and Yom Ha'Atzmaut. With all these days will come the media frenzy about Haredim who ignore the sirens, the commemorations, the ceremonies, and disrespect the solemness of the [first 2 of the 3] days by continuing to walk or be otherwise busy during the siren and the moment of silence. It seems to me, through simple observation and through absolutely no hard science or statistics, that most people, as the years go by, seem to at least publicly respect the public sensitivities and not make trouble. What they might do in private, I don't know nor do I care, but at least in public these incidents seem to be happening less and less each year.
Someone who in the past has been a Haredi troublemaker also seems to be turning over a new leaf. Instead of continuing with the attacks, including emotional, verbal and physical, that he was involved in in previous years, he is now turning to a more mature method of protest. This anti-zionist is now turning to the Supreme Court of Israel to try to push his agenda.Elchonon Estrovitz has been convicted in the past for destruction of property, graffiti and defacing property (including such sensitive sites as Yad Vashem and Ammunition Hill), and damaging the flag after trying to light the flag at a memorial site on fire. Estrovitz also said that if he could he would blow up the Knesset, a number of army bases, and the Supreme Court.
Estrovitz has now filed a petition with that same Supreme Court he previously would have liked to blow up and is trying to banish the Memorial Day siren to only be blared at official ceremonies. And Estrovitz uses claims of liberalism and democracy to support his petition.
Estrovitz says that the Memorial Day siren harms the right of people to express their opinions and positions, and is the cause of confusion in communities. He calls the Memorial Day siren a classic feature of a dictatorship. The law stating that during the siren all work and movement in the roads must stop is contrary to the values of freedom and democracy, it harms freedom of expression, it harms personal rights and freedom of the citizens, along with causing great confusion and fear in public. Estrovitz says that people stand in collective silence without knowing what they are doing or why, and many just do so out of fear while doing so against their own personal worldview, even if at times harmful to their own business. This creation of an environment of fear is classic dictatorship.Furthermore, Estrovitz claims, Israel is the only country in the Western world, and perhaps in the entire world, in which such a memorial siren is sounded in the entire public sphere, while even in dictatorships not all sectors are required to stand in silence.
(source: Ynet)
I wait to see what the Supreme Court will do with this...
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