Arab bus drivers contracted to drive yeshiva students from southern Israel into the capital for Jerusalem Day refused to transport the students Sunday.
Students from the Ohel Shlomo Yeshiva, a Bnei Akiva school in Beersheba, were left without transportation to Jerusalem Day festivities in the capital Sunday morning, when all five bus drivers assigned to the school refused to drive the students.
“The bus company’s drivers are Arabs,” Aviad Tzadok, the school’s principal, told Israel National News. “All of them cancelled their drives this morning. I ended up with no buses this morning.”
Another school administrator, Rabbi Shlomi Tuvol, spoke with the manager of the bus company, who told him that the bus drivers had received death threats aimed at deterring them from driving the students.
“At 7:00 a.m. the manager of the bus company told me that ‘my drivers don’t want to make the trip’.”
“They said that their lives were threatened, that anyone who would drive [the students] would be stoned to death.”
School officials made arrangements with a second bus company, securing rides from most of the students, though some students were left in Beersheba.