The driving force of a 1994 Seville® SLS.
The power of a SmartLease®:

Identity Crisis
On The Kibbutz

Debt from the roaring '80s is turning the socialist
farm into a scapegoat.

• New 270-hp Northstar System V8
• Real-time Road-Sensing Suspension
• Full-range Traction Control

47 944

24 MONTHS

• Anti-lock brakes
• Dual front air bags*

A MONTH
SMARTLEASE
WITH $2 ,000 DOWN**

$12,53616

SMARTLEASE PLUS

CADI LLAC

CREATING A HIGHER STANDARD

'Always wear safety belts, even with air bags.
1994 Seville SLS SmartLease $479.44 per month, 24 months, $2,000 down payment. First month's lease payment of$479.44 plus $525 reE sec-dep. and cortsumer down payment of$2,000 fora total of $3004.44
due at kale signing. Taxes, license, title fees and ins r. extra. GMAC must approve lease. Example based on a 1994 Seville SLS : $44,840 MSRP inchxling destination charge. To get total pyrnt, molt. pymts.
by 24. Your payments may be higher cc lower. Option to purchase at lease end for $31,074.12. Mileage charge of 1St per mile over 24,000 miles. Lew, pays for excessive wear and tze.

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Go'ciley 6d/ea()

OPEN

THURS. TIL 9
& 8 Mile Rd.

465.2020 343.5300

LARRY DERFNER ISRAEL CORRESPONDENT

0

ne of your basic 1990s Is-
raeli types — a stock mar-
ket speculator carrying a
cellular phone — was hol-
lering the other day about the in-
justice of the government's plan
to tax his winnings. "They want
to take our money and give it to
the kibbutzim!" he complained.
It was total nonsense, but in front
of the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange,
heads nodded in agreement.
Israel's 140,000 kibbutzniks
have gotten used to being the na-
tional scapegoat. Their glory days
are decades past. Now, with most
Israelis chasing money as a way
of life, the kibbutzim are popu-
larly derided as a drain on the
economy, an anachronism from
the failed socialist past, an Israeli
museum piece that would turn to
dust if not for the political
patronage of the Labor Party.
For their part, members of the
85-year-old kibbutz movement
admit they have life-threatening
problems: ideological fatigue, too
many retired veterans to support,
young people leaving in droves,
hardly any new blood coming in.
And, above all, debt.
The kibbutzim are paying off
billions of dollars in old loans to
the country's banks, and getting
further and further behind. A
bail-out plan commissioned by
the Finance Ministry recom-
mended in mid-August that the
government and banks pick up
$1.2 billion of the debt, following
the roughly $1.5 billion they ex-
cused in 1989. In return, the kib-
butzim would hand over assets,
mainly a good chunk of their
farmland, which real estate de-
velopers are itching to bid for.
The kibbutzim turned the idea
down flat. The plan would re-
move any chance they had for

economic growth and "perpetu-
ate our status as an economical-
ly depressed population," said the
leadership of the Labor Party-
affiliated Takam movement,
which includes most of Israel's
270 kibbutzim. As for the debt,
Takam said much of it "has no
chance of being returned."
The kibbutz movement has
been in deep economic crisis since
1985. That was the year the gov-
ernment brought down the triple-
digit inflation of the early 1980s.
However, the sky-high interest
loans the banks had made in
those years still had to be repaid.
Kibbutzim, businesses and any-
body who had borrowed heavily
during the hyperinflation were
suddenly staring at catastrophic
debt.
"How did some of the private
businesses recover? The way pri-
vate businesses recover. They
fired lots and lots of workers and
sold off assets," said Zvi Ben-
David, Takam's chief economist.
"But we can't fire people. They're
our members. And we can't sell
off our dining rooms or our barns,
either."
If the debt crisis wasn't
enough, agriculture, which had
always been the heart of the kib-
butz economy and way of life,
became a steadily declining busi-
ness. And, as the Israeli economy
became more and more compet-
itive, the kibbutzim suddenly
found that their old, stolid ways
of managing their businesses
were hopelessly out of sync with
the free market.
Thousands of members gave
up and left. All sorts of adjust-
ments were made. More people
began working outside, unprof-
itable factories were closed, pri-
vate capital and professional

PHOTO © GLEN CALVIN MOON

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A Tel Aviv broker offers shares for sale as the market plummeted.

