Is Israel Over? -Benny Morris

[Shaktimaan]

Israel is under assault. On Sept. 20 the Palestinian Authority plans to unilaterally declare statehood and go to the United Nations for recognition. This is a rejection of all efforts for a peaceful compromise. In its wake will come waves of Palestinian violence. And yet this is just the latest manifestation of an embattled Israel that is being threatened from the outside—by Muslim Arab states and societies, Egyptians storming the Israeli Embassy, a nuclear-arming Iran (with its local sidekicks, Hamas in the Gaza Strip, Hizbullah in Lebanon), and a besieged President Bashar al-Assad in Syria—and from the inside by domestic upheaval that led to the largest mass protests in the country’s history.

More than 50 years ago, Israel’s leaders, headed by David Ben-Gurion, believed and hoped that they were creating a social democracy, with all the requisite egalitarian accoutrements (socialized national health care, progressive income tax, child benefits, subsidized cheap housing). Ben-Gurion, who owned almost nothing and retired to a primitive hut in the Negev Desert, typified the austere lifestyle, and greatness, of the state’s founders.
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This is no longer Israel. A profound, internal, existential crisis has arrived. It stems in part from the changing nature of the country, more right wing, more restrictive, far less liberal, and far less egalitarian. Many moderate Israelis fear the country is heading for ruin. Indeed, the country’s ruling class, including Benjamin Netanyahu and his predecessors Ehud Olmert (now on trial for corruption) and Ehud Barak (a former head of the Labor Party and current defense minister), live in opulence, and the feeling is that they are out of touch with reality. In Tel Aviv, where some 350,000 gathered in protest, a widespread chant, set to a popular children’s ditty, was “Bibi has three apartments, which is why we have none.”

Tent cities popped up as the demonstrators—20- to 45-year-olds, with a healthy contingent of older people—rallied against nonprogressive taxation, low wages, and the high cost of housing and consumer goods, which have made it nigh impossible for families to make ends meet. A full 20 percent of Israelis (and 15 percent of Israeli Jews) live under the poverty line, and the top decile of Israel’s population earns 31 percent of the country’s total net income. The lowest decile earns a mere 1.6 percent. Last year Israel was elected to membership in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, a group of the world’s 32 most-developed countries. Among them, Israel ranks as one of the worst (alongside Mexico and the United States) in terms of wealth polarization.


http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2011/09/11/first-report.html

[Name removed]

1. Deleted message

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[AverageJoe90]

2. I certainly hope not! We DON'T need another Holocaust.

As bad as the Likudniks may have been, and they've been running the place for a good while now, I'd rather see full democracy restored there, with a little extra hardship to be weathered, than for Israel to disappear and hundreds of thousands of innocent Jews(and others, too!) possibly finding themselves being attacked, and some perhaps even mass-murdered by blood thirsty Islamist jihadi freaks. (And quite possibly, many Palestinian civilians who either try to stay on the sidelines or try to oppose the Islamists such as Hamas, Hizbullah, etc. may not be too fortunate either. Hamas, especially, has killed plenty of Gazans whose actions, beliefs, etc. don't conform to their sick fascistic worldview.)
Unfortunately, it also goes without saying that hardcore members of Israel's extreme right might do just the same thing with innocent Palestinians.

What is needed in Israel is what is needed here; activism, exposure of the truth, and a sense of community. If this can't be done, Israelis & Palestinians may never be able to get along, and Israel may never be able to return to it's democratic & egalitarian roots.

[RaleighNCDUer]

3. "A full 20 percent of Israelis (and 15 percent of Israeli Jews) live under the poverty line,

and the top decile of Israel’s population earns 31 percent of the country’s total net income. The lowest decile earns a mere 1.6 percent."

And at that, they are still significantly more egalitarian than we are.

If it is a crisis that threatens the country there, why isn't it here?

[shaayecanaan]

6. That is an excellent question...

The top decile in the United States earns about 50% of the national income, making it far less egalitarian than Israel. For some reason, extreme inequality of income in the United States is able to persist without any real social unrest.

http://elsa.berkeley.edu/~saez/saez-UStopincomes-2006prel.pdf

[TomClash]

4. Entirely apart from the Palestinian issue . . .

. . . isn't this phenomenon occurring throughout much of the world?

It's a global class war. Why should Israel be immune?

[Ruby the Liberal]

5. And here you have the influence of the US

"spreading" our brand of "democracy" to the world.

Greed sucks.