Monday, March 26, 2012

Daylight savings time in Israel - still controversial!

One of the amusing things about being in Israel is that every year the Knesset passes a law deciding when daylight savings time will start and end. This year, apparently, it will start on Friday, with the clocks moved one hour forward at 2 A.M.  The ending date still has to be decided. The Interior Ministry wants it to start before Yom Kippur, while the Kehat Committee (a committee set up by the Interior Minister, Eli Yishai, last year when 300,000 people petitioned to end daylight savings time later in the year) recommended that it should continue until October 1.

2 comments:

  1. Why isn't it ALWAYS a Sunday morning like here in the good old USA? Why is it even a controversy? Petitions? Oy. Everything is political to Israelis, except those things that aren't but should be.

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  2. It's not a Sunday morning because Israelis work on Sundays. Most Israelis, on the other hand, don't work on Friday, so that's why it's scheduled then. The question of when it ends has to do with the date of Yom Kippur because the Interior Minister, who is from the Shas party (one of the religious parties) wants to make sure that his constituents don't have to fast any later in the evening.

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