LIFE IN ISRAEL
F i\ sH1ON S '
Fi -D
•
E. NCH
•
This Summer Israelis Carved
A Big Piece of The Good Life
1
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38 FRIDAY, SEPT, 18, 1987
Israel Correspondent
erusalem — The UJA
delegation swooped
down on Ben-Gurion
Airport last month in a
chartered Air France Con-
corde and was quickly bun-
dled aboard 25 cushioned-
and-cleaned army command
cars.
Foregoing the pleasures of
the traffic-choked highway,
the 150-strong delegation
bumped and ground its way
up to Jerusalem along the
old, disused (but freshly swept
and watered) "Burma Road,"
which had been built by Col-
onel Mickey Marcus to break
the Arab siege of Jerusalem
during Israel's War of In-
dependence in 1948.
And what were the citizens
of this plucky little pioneer
state doing as the UJA donors
were eating dust?
Partying, that's what. Liv-
ing it up.
They were thronging
Dizengoff and Ben Yehudah,
packing restaurants and
cafes, theaters and concert
halls, frolicking on the
beaches, flocking to resorts, -
cramming the stores.
To use the newly-imported
catchword beloved of Israeli
journalists, the Summer of
`87 has been nothing short of
"glitzy?'
And if you really want to
know what Israelis are talk-
ing about—as opposed to
what politicians and out-of-
touch bureaucrats think they
ought to be talking about—
they are talking about how
other Israelis are spending
their money.
Uzi has decided to trade in
his Subaru ($21,000) and is
facing the tantalizing choice
between a Citroen ($22,000)
and a Ford Sierra ($26,500).
Roni and Eti, just back from
Paris and London, are argu-
ing about whether it's to be
Austria or southern Italy
next year.
Motti can't decide whether
to renovate his apartment or
buy one of those snappy little
cottagim (starting price:
$200,000) going up at the end
of the road.
Needless to say, this isn't
the Israel the UJA Big
Donors came to see, though
they would have had to be
wearing blinders to miss it
entirely.
There are, of course, still
plenty of poor Israelis and
large numbers of ailing in-
stitutions. The farmers are
j
demonstrating, the coopera-
tive moshav settlements are
on the brink of collapse, the
universities are not sure they
can afford to begin the aca-
demic year, the Lavi has been
grounded and thousands of
aircraft workers face
unemployment.
But in this land of con-
tradictions, private wealth
and consumption have never
been more conspicuous. The
middle-, upper-middle and
upper-upper-middle classes
have money. And they know
how to spend it.
A phenomenal one-third of
all Israeli adults owns a video
cassette recorder ($1,500),
while half a million— one-
sixth of the population—took
trips abroad last year, and the
figure will surely be higher in
1987.
Dishwashers, microwave
ovens, designer kitchens —
luxuries that once symbolized
the hopeless decadence of the
If you want to
know what Israelis
are talking about,
it's how other
Israelis are living it
up — spending big
money on cars,
gadgets and
vacations.
Diaspora fleshpots — are
becoming commonplace.
Die-hard idealists take a
gloomy view of all this flashy
consumerism.
But economists, surprising-
ly, are fairly sanguine.
The current spending spree
is not necessarily a symptom
of "live now for tomorrow we
die," they say. Rather, it is an
indication that the roller-
coaster Israeli economy may
be approaching normality.
Two years ago, inflation was
running at an annual rate of
450 percent and a panic-prone
Israeli public, deeply suspi-
cious of government inten-
tions, kept its excess wealth
well hidden.
Today, though, inflation is
down to 20 percent, the
shekel is relatively stable
against the dollar, and prices
actually remain the same
from one day to the next.
Increasingly confident that
the bad old days are behind
them, Israelis—whose official
average income is well below
$1,000 a month—are pulling
their estimated $4 billion in
"black" savings out from
under the floor tiles and buy-
ing themselves some creature
comforts and good times.
And who can blame them?
Israelis pay the highest taxes
in the free world, and the
average Israeli male "do-
nates" seven years of his life
to military service.
"It is impossible," says Yoel
Marcus, influential columnist
of the Hebrew-language dai-_
ly Maariv,"to constantly de-
mand nothing but sacrifices
and begrudge the people
leisure-time enjoyment. Man
cannot live by tension alone."
There are, however, signs
that the drive towards in-
dividual well-being will have
a positive spin-off, unleashing
latent energies and entre-
preneurial instincts that
previously were trapped in
one of the most heavy-
handed, centralized
bureaucracies outside the
communist bloc.
Since tax rates were cut in
April, tax revenues have
risen, a significant victory for
free-market economists who
have been harping on the fact
that if people can keep more
of what they earn, they'll not
only work harder but also in-
dulge less in the national
sport of tax evasion.
While consumer imports
rose by 10 percent in the sec-
ond quarter of 1987 (com-
pared with the same period
last year), this was offset by a
leap in production and in-
vestments, which the experts
regard as an indicator of in-
cipient economic growth. To
further fuel the optimists,
Israel's trade deficit has
dropped by 15 percent, exports
have risen by 16 percent and
foreign reserves have more
than doubled.
Statistics are notoriously
fickle indicators of anything,
let alone incipient economic
growth, but if the Jews of the
Jewish State are about to get
down to business instead of
playing politics and looking
for hand-outs, the effect will
be revolutionary.
NEWS Immimm
PLO Changes
Tune At UN
Geneva (JTA) — Yasir
Arafat and the senior PLO
leadership used a United
Nation-sponsored conference
on Palestine to try to present
a new image of their
organization and of
themselves to the Western
world, according to news
reports last week.