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Essay

Guest Column

On The Homefront

Domestic challenges pervade Israeli life.

R

ising rents, high taxes, wealth
gaps, too-few jobs, absorp-
tion headaches, bureaucratic
log jams and grocery-store sticker
shock (a byproduct of a low rate of
food imports) have grabbed headlines
in Israeli newspapers. But Israel's non-
security-related domestic challenges
don't end there.
For example,
almost all
Israelis seem-
ingly live on
credit to some
extent, making
personal savings
a luxury in a
nation with an
international
reputation
Robert Sklar
for having a
Contributing
robust economy
Editor
spurred by a
high-tech sector.
What's more, it's no secret Israelis
fear spiraling energy prices in the wake
of a pending business deal that could
yield a natural-gas monopoly involv-
ing the two largest, newest gas fields
discovered off Israel's Mediterranean
coast.
Even if their borders somehow
turned safe and secure, Israelis would
find plenty domestically to grapple
with.

The Backdrop

Israel's high cost of living caught world
attention in 2011 when thousands of
younger Israelis, irked by the jump
in the price of cottage cheese and
other everyday needs, demonstrated
for social justice by pitching tents on
Rothschild Boulevard, the main drag in
Tel Aviv, until Prime Minister Benjamin
Netanyahu responded with an action
plan for change. Six months later, the
Occupy Wall Street movement similarly
sprouted in New York City in search of
social and economic equality.
Also in 2011, the U.S. and Israel
boasted about the same degree of
income inequality, startlingly second
only to Mexico among developed
nations, according to a newly released
study by the Taub Center for Social
Policy Studies in Israel, a Jerusalem-
based socioeconomic think tank.
Illustrating Israel's income disparity,
Israelis holding the top 10 percent of
incomes earned almost five times as

24

July 16 • 2015

much as those with the lowest tenth of
incomes, although that gap is shrink-
ing, the study found.
Further, Israel's poverty rate is up,
especially among Ultra-Orthodox Jews,
and stands disturbingly high among
developed countries.
The study took aim at the relentless
increase in Israel's real estate and rent
prices — resulting from a bureaucracy
that causes new construction to drag on
for years compared to a much-swifter
approval path within the European
Union.
A JTA report on the study explored
how Israel's "shadow economy:' the por-
tion of business that stays hidden from
taxes and regulation, comprises about
a fifth of Israel's gross domestic prod-
uct. The "shadow" was cast by Israel's
high tax burden on small businesses;
the effective tax rate of nearly 58 per-
cent is six percentage points higher
than the Organization for Economic
Cooperation and Development (OECD)
average.

Improved Learning

Education also commanded the study
spotlight.
While Israel is investing more in
educating its kids (11 percent of the
total government budget), Israel lags on
the OECD radar in per-pupil spending
largely because the nation has more
children than most OECD countries.
Notably, Israel's classrooms average 28
students, seven more than the OECD
average.
But more Israeli students qualify for
college (about 53 percent) and fewer
are failing (about 29 percent) — a
positive trend amid Israel's convoluted
education system given the nation's cul-
tural, ethnic and religious dynamics.
As it must, national security reso-
nates foremost for many Israeli leaders.
Hamas in the Gaza Strip, Hezbollah in
Lebanon and the clerics of Iran are all
high-octane enemies, but ISIS is per-
haps the greatest immediate danger to
Israel as it gains traction in Egypt's law-
less Sinai Peninsula to Israel's south.
Still, the Netanyahu administra-
tion and the Knesset, encouraged by
the socioeconomic-minded Yesh Atid
and Zionist Union parties, have begun
to grasp how safe, secure borders,
essential as they are, would mean little
without significant advances on the
domestic front as well.

❑

Keeping Watch On Jewish
Challenges Worldwide

O

n June 18, I began my
term as president of
the American Jewish
Committee's Detroit Regional
Office. A number of immediate
challenges face our Jewish com-
munity and Israel. Chief among
them is Iran, which has been pur-
suing nuclear weapons, influencing
events and causing carnage all
over the globe. Its leaders regu-
larly threaten to annihilate Israel.
Blatant anti-Semitism has re-
emerged with a vengeance in
Europe and is so open and so obvi-
ous all over the Middle East that
even Westerners have come to
simply expect it as the norm for
that part of the world.
We have also come
to expect that when
a secular terrorist
attack is perpetrated
in Paris, Brussels,
Toulouse, India and
other places, it also
will have an add-on
component attacking
a Jewish target.
It has become
acceptable for the
world to turn a blind
eye to Jew-hatred
under the pretense that it is just
a protest of the latest Israeli gov-
ernment policy. Even some Jews
have blindly fallen into this trap
from the safety of their comfort-
able lives in North America, where
they can criticize Israel's security
and other decisions without having
to bear any risk or pay any conse-
quences. They forget that it is the
Middle East, not the Midwest.
A general sense of apathy exists
among many Jews today about
Israel: its security, safety and
future, its importance to Jews, its
need for protection from Iran and
from many of its neighbors, its
need for protection in the news
media, its need to remain a stead-
fast ally of the United States, and
its protection as a democracy and
as a Jewish state.
Israel is pro-American, pro-
democracy, pro-Jewish and
Western oriented. It acts as the

United States' largest aircraft car-
rier located in the epicenter of
the most dangerous area on Earth
although it requires no American
soldiers.

Anti Israel Media Bias

-

The media bias against Israel from
major news outlets is especially
problematic. In coverage of the
Gaza war last summer, it was com-
mon for the lead story of major
news outlets to have an unverified
number of civilians killed by Israel,
with no explanation about Hamas
using human shields or why the
entire war responding to thou-
sands of indiscriminate rockets
fired on Israel by Hamas was hap-
pening.
Compare that with
recent reporting on the
Saudis attacking the Houti
rebels in Yemen. News
coverage usually mentions
only that a certain number
of people are estimated to
have died so far; no civilian
casualty counts are given
from the massive Saudi
bombings, usually no men-
tion of the numbers injured
or the numbers of people
displaced and often no mention
that Iran is behind the Houti reb-
els.
Even when Israel set up a hospi-
tal in the blink of an eye far from
its borders in Nepal to help earth-
quake victims, reports on this
incredible feat were intertwined
with comments from Amnesty
International and the like criticiz-
ing Israel.
Israel, the only truly democratic
country in the Middle East, is
singled out and under constant
attack in every imaginable way:
from rockets, tunnels, terror-
ist attacks, political and inter-
national bodies like the United
Nations Human Rights Council,
on college campuses through-
out North America, via boycotts
against its academics, scientists
and products, through divest-
ment campaigns, through horrible
incitement against it from the