An online battle between Transportation Minister Yisrael Katz and a secular citizen erupted on the Transportation Minister’s official Facebook account this week, Channel Two reports.
Because of the last day of Passover and the Shabbat that follows it, all public transportation will be canceled in Israel between Thursday evening and Saturday night. And one resident was not taking the news in stride.
“With this next long weekend upon us, we will meet on the country’s hitchhiking page, the page of Transportation Minister, MK Yisrael Katz, in order to find rides with each other, or with Yisrael and his friends, in the 48+ hours we are locked inside our areas and there is no public transportation. Invite and share with your friends! The seventh day of Passover starts Thursday night, and most of us will be under siege and unable to visit our families,” a poster wrote sarcastically on the minister’s social media page.
“It’s lucky we have a great Transportation Minister that takes care of all of us – the elderly, the disabled, and the ordinary people who can’t or don’t want to have a car – and arranges rides for all of us during our imprisonment. Don’t forget to be polite and generous, and don’t forget to thank and tag the generous Minister Katz who arranged all this,” the poster added.
The minister of six years reacted angrily, writing, “I will only say this once. Turn to [Labor leader Yitzhak] Buji Herzog who will commit to not sit in a government that will not change the status quo. This is a show of your and your leftist friends’ hypocrisy.”
Katz further asserted that only left-wingers were interested in using public transportation on Shabbat and holidays and asked the online poster to look to the last election and see what the public really believed in.
The poster fired back, suggesting that Katz’s answer “didn’t speak to the matter at hand. What’s the connection to Buji Herzog? Is he Transportation Minister? Is he Prime Minister?…You think only leftists use public transportation? I invite you to tour public transport with me; you’ll see the whole country there.”
“Your political positions are clear,” Katz responded. “Since you’re playing dumb, I will clarify once again: the status quo in relation to Shabbat is built on political agreement, and is not connected to the personal policies of the Transportation Minister. No party has undertaken not to sit in the government because it refused to change this status quo. During the next elections, establish your own party and ask for the public’s trust. In the meantime, stop the show of hypocrisy.”
The poster responded that Katz’s claims were false, but received no further response.
