Desecration of the dead: hundreds of thousands of non-religious people in Israel are discriminated against Israel today

There are more than 400,000 non-religious people in Israel, but when they die they receive miraculous and degrading treatment from the state, ignoring regulations written decades ago and without a sufficient budget.

This emerges from a new study by the Knesset Research and Information Institute (MMM) written by Jerry Elmo-Capital.

The regulations for the right to civil burial, enacted in 1996, stipulate that everyone is entitled to be buried in a civilian cemetery, and stated that cemeteries will be established in different parts of the country with reasonable distances, but the study by Israel Today shows that in reality, decades After the law is enacted, the distance between it and reality is enormous.

Out of 1,200 cemeteries in Israel, only 27 of them provide de facto civil burial services, and another four are without a valid burial license or in the process of renewing a license.

The vast majority of cemeteries provide burial services exclusively to local residents or nearby cities, and only three of them - Emek Hefer, Beer Sheva and Givat Brenner, provide state-funded burial services to deceased people from all over the country.

A Jerusalem resident, for example, who wishes to be buried in a civil burial, can only do so in Be'er Sheva or in the Hefer Valley with state funding.

Residents of other cities also do not receive a regulated response.

Regulations of the Civil Burial Law stipulated that regional cemeteries be established divided into four areas - Central, Jerusalem, North and South, but even today, decades after the law was enacted, and about five years after the State Comptroller's report reprimanded the Minister of Religions for this. Civilian cemeteries - this did not exist and even today there is no possibility of establishing such cemeteries. In the jurisdiction of deceased non-residents, the Ministry of Religious Affairs has difficulty declaring civilian regional cemeteries.

In response to a study that to date, 24 years after the regulations were amended, no civilian cemeteries have been declared, the Ministry of Religions stated that "the lack of a formal declaration of a cemetery as a civilian cemetery does not infringe on its status as a civilian cemetery and does not infringe on civilian burial rights." From the ministry's point of view, the mere granting of a license for civil burial in accordance with the regulations is sufficient to operate a cemetery for civil burial. " But this claim has no basis, because today there are only three cemeteries that provide civil burial services without considerations of place of residence, and they are certainly very far from some of the major cities in Israel.

But even in the current situation, it appears that civil burial bodies are significantly discriminated against. Although in 2018 support tests were published for civil burial bodies for the development of civil cemeteries in the amount of NIS 14 million, in which 11 burial bodies, in practice only two bodies, in Haifa and Kiryat Shmona, received the allocation in full and two more, Ariel and Petah Tikva, received Part of the allocation. Seven additional burial bodies did not receive any amount because they did not meet the requirements for document completion. In addition, between the years 2021-2019, NIS 3 million was allocated for the development of Jewish cemeteries - but this allocation did not include any budget for the development of civilian cemeteries.

In fact, not only is there no future news for the hundreds of thousands of non-religious people in the State of Israel regarding the establishment of civilian cemeteries, in practice no one has any information on how many people are interested in being buried in such cemeteries in the coming years.

The Research Institute's inquiry to the Ministry of Religions revealed that the latter has no up-to-date data on the number of deaths buried in civil burials between 2021-2019, nor does the Ministry of Religions have up-to-date estimates of those who will seek burial in civil burial in the coming years.

The Ministry of Religions did not respond until the news was published and will be published when it is received.

Were we wrong?

Fixed!

If you found an error in the article, we'll be happy for you to share it with us