Gender Segregation in Israeli Parks Must Not Pass
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
On the orders of Environmental Protection Minister Idit Silman, the Israel Nature and Parks Authority is supposed to start segregating men and women this week at the sites it manages.
Supporters of segregation try to downplay the importance of this precedent. It's just an experiment, they promise; it will take place only at two natural springs; and it won't be conducted during regular opening hours. But this is nonsense. This segregation must be stopped in its infancy. Nobody should believe the empty promises of Silman's missionaries.
Instead, people should read the coalition agreements signed by Benjamin Netanyahu, the ultra-Orthodox parties and the extremist religious nationalist parties. These agreements outline a plan to make separation between the sexes legal and normal in every public venue. Silman's "pilot" is a key brick in this plan to subordinate Israel's public spaces to increasingly stringent religious principles.
According to the statements issued by Silman and the nature authority, this gender separation will take place at the Ein Haniya park near Jerusalem and the Einot Tzukim park on the northern Dead Sea. At both parks, separate-sex swimming will be allowed twice a week during August, before and after normal operating hours.
It's no accident that neither Silman nor the authority offered any details about this separation. In an internal discussion among nature authority officials a few months ago, the agency's director, Raya Shourky, admitted that this experiment raises "legal problems." Shourky - not to mention the Justice Ministry, which is supposed to supervise and authorize such changes - would do better to tell the truth: This is an illegal act.
In late 2020, Dina Zilber, then the deputy attorney general, issued an opinion saying that without explicit authorization in law, any attempt by the nature authority to enforce gender separation in a public venue would be illegal. "The point of departure is that a government agency, which is bound by the rules of public law, will not, as a rule, provide gender-separated services," she wrote.
That's because the infringement on the right to equality, which is protected by dint of the Basic Law on Human Dignity and Liberty, would be too great.
Her conclusions haven't lost their validity. And this development makes it clear that the government's legal overhaul and its destruction of the rule of law are meant in part to legalize discrimination on the basis of sex. But no government has the right to do that.
No argument about multicultural "consideration" for others can legitimize this. Public spaces must be open to everyone irrespective of religion, race or sex. The Justice Ministry must ban gender separation at nature reserves.
The above article is Haaretz's lead editorial, as published in the Hebrew and English newspapers in Israel.
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If I understand this correctly, religious forces in Israel want to prevent men and women from being in the same swimming pool, at least at certain hours of the day. This sort of thing is what happens in a theocracy where religious fundamentalism dictates public policy.
This is nuts.
It sounds like what Islamic fundamentalists would do, which just shows that religious fundamentalism never belongs in a democratic society where they can dictate policy.
Has anybody else noticed that both Christian and Jewish people, when given the power to control the masses, tend to behave just like Muslims?
Israel is definitely going the wrong way under the reactionary Netanyahu coalition.
I used to be a strong supporter of Israel, even served for a time as Canadian Director of Development for an Israeli hospital, travelled there twice and have seen much of Israel, but right now I consider it a rogue state, rogue against its own population - I fear that with what is being imposed upon its people will lead to a civil war.