Satmar’s Shabbat in Safed Sparks Media Backlash, as Writer Cites Silence on Bnei Brak Parking Chaos

Some local residents who are not observant later took the matter to the press, publishing footage taken during Shabbat and complaining that the Hasidic guests created nuisances in Safed’s southern neighborhood. Their claims included the rental of a building said to lack approval for overnight use, the operation of generators, garbage left outside the structure until city workers removed it after Shabbat, and traffic disruptions that allegedly blocked the main road to Ziv Medical Center because pedestrians walked on the roadway. One resident, who was desecrating Shabbat publicly, said, “I was driving back alone from my children, and suddenly they shouted ‘Shabbes’ and banged on the car. I have never encountered anything like this.”

The article argues that the national media amplified those complaints, while ignoring what it says happened only a few days earlier in Bnei Brak. On Wednesday evening, a major concert by one of the secular sector’s leading singers drew hundreds of secular visitors from Tel Aviv and the surrounding area, and they reportedly flooded the Osem supermarket parking lot in Bnei Brak in search of free parking. As a result, local residents returning from shopping for Shabbat found the lot completely blocked, with hundreds of spaces occupied for hours by out-of-town revelers.

The piece says no comparable outcry was heard about the Bnei Brak incident, and asks why terms such as disrespect and traffic chaos were not used then. It praises the Osem management for closing the lot and demanding full payment from the drivers, and concludes that damage to quality of life and desecration of God’s name are not one-sided. The writer says media criticism of the Safed gathering should be balanced by looking at how outsiders behave in ultra-Orthodox towns.