| New Yehuda Lave letter published in Yesterday's Jerusalem Post opposing the Jerusalem Post's policy of pushing to desecrate Shabbat by running the public trains Sherwin Pomerantz, a very bright friend of mine, writes in Monday, Sept 4, paper that the light rail should run on Shabbat but halachically.
There is a principle in Judaism, that just because you can do something halachically on Shabbat, you don't have to push the envelope. For example you could leave your television running on Shabbat by leaving it on the night before, but we don't because for many people it would spoil the Shabbat. Some of course would enjoy it, but for most Shabbat observers it would ruin the Shabbat.
Even though Tel Aviv is not Jerusalem, there are plenty of people who enjoy and keep the Shabbat. The principal of the status quo is that we are a Jewish country and we don't publicly desecrate the Shabbat. By separating the workforce into Jewish and non Jewish workers, we do become a bifurcated country and by running the trains, the buses are forced to run to make them practical.
Some lines have to be made to make us special. While it is a Appeal to emotion or argumentum ad passiones (meaning the same in Latin) is an informal fallacy characterized by the manipulation of the recipient's emotions in order to win an argument, especially in the absence of factual evidence, to say people are hurt run the trains, one must keep the larger perspective that the only Jewish country does not publicly desecrate the Shabbat. | 
