MK Moshe Gafni at the local government conference (stills: Reuven Castro, video: Niv Aharonson)
Following the publication that a senior Torah Jew, Moshe Gafni, is promoting a bill to regulate separate bathing hours for men and women in springs in nature reserves, the Nature and Parks Authority were not surprised by the initiative today (Tuesday), nor did they fall off their seats.
Officially, they say laconically that they did not receive any instructions on the matter.
"We read like everyone else in the media. If and when we receive an inquiry on the subject, we will study it."
An authority official who is familiar with the issue mentioned that about two years ago a similar idea was tested for a one-off trial at the three-year-old kindergarten, and was even implemented several days after the hours of operation for the general public.
The ultra-orthodox audience did not jump at the opportunity, to say the least.
"The demand was really minimal. People came, but not in large numbers. Most of them came out of curiosity," recalls one of the authority's veterans.
"Precisely because it didn't really take off, we wanted to expand it to a more significant pilot, at more of our sites and at more regular and longer hours. But the Deputy Ombudsman did not give it the green light from a legal point of view and the initiative was not implemented.
Spending time at the spring (photo: photo processing, Michael Giladi Flash 90)
An official at the Nature and Parks Authority said that since then the idea has not really been abandoned because initiatives like Gafni's have continued to come from various organizations and have not been tried, in the absence of a legal basis for their implementation.
Bartag does not know how to gauge the significance of such an initiative both in terms of the amount of manpower that will be required and in terms of the spirit of things. "We do not manage our guests and do not impose on them," said an authority official. "We host them.
I assume that implementing such a decision will require advocacy.
We will have to analyze what can be done, how much personnel it will require and how much it will cost.
We assume and hope that there will be a dialogue on the issue."
Yossi Fatal, Director General of the Bureau of Inbound Tourism Organizers in Israel, strongly opposes the proposed move. "The initiative will harm Israel's image as a tourist destination," Lavala said. in the tour program in Israel.
In tourist sites where it is possible to swim, there is no separation between tourists and Israelis, and we will be forced to exclude these sites from the tour plans for Israel."
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Interested in separation in the springs.
Gafni (Photo: Reuven Castro)
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According to Fatal, the State of Israel is now known in the world as a pluralistic country open to visits to sites without restrictions based on gender or religious reasons, and in his estimation the damage that the move will cause will not only be economic.
"A country's image is a strategic asset. In the international atmosphere that exists today after the elections, such a move would be a means of harming Israel's name, image and position in the world at the hands of those for whom the evil of the state is an ideology. It is enough to think what Israelis flying abroad who knew they were visiting a country would feel and decide There is a separate bathing obligation."
"I don't understand what the great achievement will be," surprised a 58-year-old ultra-Orthodox from Jerusalem named Yitzchak (Tzachi).
"It's not necessarily that necessary. Those who have children want to go with their family anyway. For girls, it's not that much of a consideration anyway, so it mainly concerns boys, and they've always found solutions for them in distant places. It's a luxury. It's not something that's required A high priority. I don't understand this banality of stirring up disputes. The country is burning and what is needed is a separate bath in the sauna?"
A similar position was expressed by Leah, a 61-year-old ultra-Orthodox resident of Zichron Yaakov. "The situation is so difficult in the world and someone thinks that bathing separately in the springs is important? How can you spend time promoting something like this? It's like talking about the importance of playing marbles. Not relevant to me at all," she explained.
"I myself go into the sea in a remote place near Nachsholim beach. I don't like politics being mixed in our lives at all, I don't vote in the elections, for me it doesn't belong to Judaism at all."
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