LIFE IN ISRAEL F i\ sH1ON S ' Fi -D • E. NCH • This Summer Israelis Carved A Big Piece of The Good Life 1 SOMERSET MALL • (313) 649.9415 2743 W. BIG BEAVER RD. • TROY, MI 48084 M.Th.Fri. 10-9. T.W Sat. 10-6. Sun. 12.5 — as seen on tv HELEN DAVIS ADJUSTABLE BEDS by ELECTROPEDIC 399-0126 1458 E. Twelve Mile Rd., Madison Heights, MI DISCOVER Capelli Colour Studio Cruises Only! Ltd & Corporation Cortina Elkin Travel Inc. Colony Interiors Hansel 'n' Gretel Travelers World The Art Show Raphael Salon Best Bakery T.C.B.Y. Body. Inc. Yogurt Carmen's Kidz KlOz. Tommy Schey Victoria's Marilyn Brooks Tres Chic Petites West Bloomfield s Newest Fashion Center Orchard Lake Rd. North of Maple 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.