High Court ruling on hametz in hospitals draws immediate rebuke, praise

A High Court ruling barring hospitals from preventing visitors bringing their own food into their premises during the Passover festival draws immediate rebuke from religious and ultra-Orthodox politicians, and praise from more liberal MKs and groups.

The United Torah Judaism (UTJ) party announces that due to the ruling, it will support an “override clause” to allow the Knesset to overrule the country’s top court in some circumstances, which Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his allies have been pushing.

“The judges are extremely insolent,” says UTJ MK Moshe Gafni. “What we legislators do with countless discussions and four plenum readings, they cancel with a single decision that lacks all logic, ruling according to their worldview without regard for anything else. We should end this.”

Other UTJ members issue similar statements, with MK Uri Maklev saying the court “is hurting patients who are careful about hametz on Passover, as are most Israeli citizens.

“The judges aren’t respecting hospitals as public places where the feelings of all populations should be considered. The court, with a series of recent foreknown rulings, is rushing toward blowing up relations between different parts of society and is doing everything to replace the leadership,” Maklev adds.

“The High Court is again showing it is completely disconnected from the people,” said MK Michael Malchieli of fellow ultra-Orthodox party Shas.

MK Tamar Zandberg from the left-wing Meretz party welcomed the ruling, saying the court “did justice against religious coercion and stopped a disgraceful practice at hospitals. A hametz police has no place in hospitals or anywhere else.”

Secular rights group Be Free Israel and liberal religious Zionist organization Torah Vaavoda, which both joined the petition against the practice, also praise the ruling in a rare joint statement.

“There is a clear statement by the High Court here that the solution must come not by coercion, but through agreement and negotiation,” they say, calling on hospitals to adopt a system in which visitors will be asked not to use hospital utensils to consume their own food and use either their own or single-use utensils.