Caselaw

Criminal Appeal (Be’er Sheva) 7182/98 Shmukler et al. v. State of Israel – Ashkelon Municipality Vice President Y. Pepper - part 8

October 27, 1999
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The Supreme Court has established a number of important rulings in our case, at pp. 216-217 it was held that:

"A.   First of all, it is clear from the law that the certification was granted on the condition that-The auxiliary will apply to all Population of 'all or a certain part thereof' of the local authority; In other words, the basis for the application of the law-The auxiliary must be territorial and not Personal.  It is forbidden, therefore, to discriminate between parts of the population according to their nationality, race, religion, etc.  True, a municipality may exclude the application of the law-The auxiliary part of an area for various reasons, such as the fact that this part is populated by residents who, according to their religion, or according to their conscience, prohibit the sale of pigs is not necessary or undesirable.  However, even in such a case, when the law is applied-The help applies only to a part of the area, for in the other parts where it is permissible to sell pork, one should not impose a prohibition on one who is prohibited from selling pork. And the fact that the 'who is' belongs to the nationality or religion on earth is of no importance-According to them, eating pork is forbidden here.  The same rule is also valid in the opposite case.  When you apply a law-Ezer prohibiting the sale of pork on part of the area, is forbidden-The auxiliary will make an exception and permit the sale of pork meat to certain people or to a class of people because of their affiliation with a particular nationality or religion.

This is clear from section 2, which contains the caveat that the restriction or prohibition must apply to the entire population.

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  1. First of all, there is no interest here in the so-called-My hand comes-A force that seeks to harm the religious worship of Christians, and there is no interest in discrimination on the basis of religious affiliation. And it's not just because the Christian religion doesn't impose any obligation to eat pork.

First, neither the Enabling Law nor the bylaw in question prohibits  the eating of pork, neither on Christians, nor on Jews, nor on anyone else.  Second, the same problem applies to all people who do not hesitate to eat pork, whether they are Christians, if they are perfect (who are also forbidden by religion to eat pork) and if they are Jewish.  Therefore, if the applicant's counsel were correct in demanding a privilege for his client, then any person – regardless of belonging to a particular religion – would be entitled to demand this privilege, and the municipality should have regarded any place where pork is sold by a person – whose religious prohibition does not bother him – as a special area and not to apply the bylaw to it.  The result is that the bylaw could only be applied to places where only people who according to their conscience are not engaged in the sale of pork, i.e., people who are ultra-Orthodox to religion, but for these there was no need for the Enabling Law and there was no need for bylaws.

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