A Federal Court Upholds the Suspension of Government Employees for Taking Time Off on Passover

In 2013, Susan Abeles, an observant Jew working for the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority (MWAA), stayed home from work on the last days of Passover—as she had done during the previous 26 years she was employed there. She returned to her office after the holiday to find that she had been suspended, based on a technicality in the way she had filed her request for leave. Abeles then sued. On January 26, a federal appellate court ruled against her, in a decision Michael A. Helfand calls “disturbing.”

[W]hy is this case so disturbing? First of all, there’s good reason to wonder whether there was any real violation of the leave policy, whether Abeles had ever previously been required to abide [so strictly] by a leave policy, or whether the MWAA informed Abeles that she was now expected to abide by that leave policy. The court’s decision seeks to end the litigation before these factual questions can be evaluated through a trial. It sounds like Abeles did what she needed to do to secure her leave. . . . [I]nstead of simply accommodating Abeles, the MWAA seized the opportunity to suspend her, which eventually led to her retiring.

But there’s a bigger problem at work here. For all those who have ever asked to schedule vacation on Jewish holidays, you know how delicate these conversations [with an employer] can be. It may be true that there is an obligation [on employers] to accommodate [you] reasonably, but you don’t win these interactions by invoking the law while talking to the person signing your paycheck. . . . [T]he reality of Abeles’s case is that if someone wants to catch you, they will all too often be successful. In too many instances, there is some rulebook or policy collecting dust somewhere that, in the hands of someone seeking to cause a problem, can undermine the law’s objective of ensuring that the religious observances of religious employees are accommodated.

The legal requirement that employers reasonably accommodate their employees’ religious observances is [impossible to ignore]. But the Fourth Circuit’s decision in Abeles v. MWAA—unless overturned—will serve as a reminder for how precarious those accommodations often can be in the real world.

Read more at Lehrhaus

More about: American Jewry, American law, Freedom of Religion, Orthodoxy, Religion & Holidays

What a Strategic Victory in Gaza Can and Can’t Achieve

On Tuesday, the Israeli defense minister Yoav Gallant met in Washington with Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin. Gallant says that he told the former that only “a decisive victory will bring this war to an end.” Shay Shabtai tries to outline what exactly this would entail, arguing that the IDF can and must attain a “strategic” victory, as opposed to merely a tactical or operational one. Yet even after a such a victory Israelis can’t expect to start beating their rifles into plowshares:

Strategic victory is the removal of the enemy’s ability to pose a military threat in the operational arena for many years to come. . . . This means the Israeli military will continue to fight guerrilla and terrorist operatives in the Strip alongside extensive activity by a local civilian government with an effective police force and international and regional economic and civil backing. This should lead in the coming years to the stabilization of the Gaza Strip without Hamas control over it.

In such a scenario, it will be possible to ensure relative quiet for a decade or more. However, it will not be possible to ensure quiet beyond that, since the absence of a fundamental change in the situation on the ground is likely to lead to a long-term erosion of security quiet and the re-creation of challenges to Israel. This is what happened in the West Bank after a decade of relative quiet, and in relatively stable Iraq after the withdrawal of the United States at the end of 2011.

Read more at BESA Center

More about: Gaza War 2023, Hamas, IDF