Just some information about the poor in Israel, and how it’s really the fault of the Israeli government.
http://www.forward.com/issues/2003/03.09.05/news1.hunger.html“The study, which was leaked to the Israeli press and dominated headlines for two days last week, showed that 22% of Israeli households, more than one in five, suffer from inadequate nutrition because of poverty.”
“Declaring that Israel had "poverty, but no hunger," Sharon won Cabinet approval June 1 for a resolution calling on Diaspora charities to focus on "Jewish and Zionist education" rather than on Israelis' economic hardship.”
Note: When they say education, I don’t think that they mean regular education. I think that they mean to say that religious and political education is being put before helping Israel’s poor. How is this all the fault of the infidata?
http://www.csmonitor.com/2002/1121/p06s01-wome.html“A $3.2 billion budget cut planned for 2003 will unfairly target Israel's poorest citizens, say critics.”
“The lack of attention, even in Israel, to the lopsided battle between left-wing activists and government economists points to the extent to which even social emergencies continue to take a back seat to security issues.
Activists say the budget cuts could help shape Israeli society for years to come, locking more poor into a cycle of poverty and widening income and class distinctions in a society that was founded with an egalitarian ethos.”
“Shlomo Svirski, director of research at the Adva Center, a left-wing Tel Aviv think tank, says such an approach is steadily widening the gap between rich and poor. He stresses that the capital-gains tax was coupled with new tax breaks that benefit the wealthy: "There was a moral choice between two groups here, and the government decided that hurting poor people would not hurt it politically," he says. Gideon Ezra, a Likud deputy minister said that while some poor people would be hurt, the cuts are necessary to balance a budget that contains essential projects such as a security fence to stop infiltrations from Palestinian areas.”
Note: Oh, sweet! The Likud party has decided that they would rather that Israelis starve (possibly to death) than decide to not build that land grabbing fence. Oh, but they care about saving Israeli’s lives, right?
And for those of you who think that this is about security….
“The Labor Party, which as a part of the national unity government joined in passing last year's cutbacks, should begin to stress the woes of the poor, says Meir Sheetreet, the Labor deputy mayor of Jerusalem. But other Labor leaders insist that after two years of terrorist attacks security and the Palestinian issue are what most interest voters.”
Note: They’re putting votes above Israeli lives. I think that they’re going to do much more damage to the Israelis than even two years of suicide bombings have. Suicide bombings in Israel hurt them as much as the humans hurt the spaceships in the movie “Independence Day” (before they were able to turn the alien’s primary weapon on them is what I’m comparing it to). However, a war on the poor is probably one of Israel’s primary weapons. My God! The government is destroying their own people for land and for votes.
What is Israel doing with their poor? Many of times, they’re talking them into living in the OT territories. These Israelis would rather live in danger of being killed by Palestinians, than put up their suffering of being poor anymore.
http://www.peacenow.org/nia/news/margalit.html“The third strip, in which most of the settlers live, is the one closest to Israel's Green Line, the pre-1967 border. This strip consists roughly of three types of settlers: those who seek a better "quality of life," those who are economically needy, and those who are both economically needy and ultra-Orthodox. The settlers who seek a better life moved from densely populated cities in Israel into settlements built on scenic hills with red-roofed houses and a garden of their own—all for a relatively small investment. One settlement of that kind is Nili, with 604 largely secular residents, which is next to the modern Orthodox "quality-of-life" settlement of Na'ale. Both are about a forty-minute drive from either Tel Aviv or Jerusalem. For the price of a three-room apartment with two bedrooms in the vicinity of Tel Aviv, a family in Nili can purchase its own six-room house. In some of these communities both secular and religious people live together.
“The second type consists of those who are relatively poor and cannot afford to buy an apartment inside Israel. Since there is very little Israeli property for rent, most people buy apartments, partly financing them by mortgages. If a settler buys an apartment worth $100,000, he will receive from the government a standing loan of $20,000, which in practice comes close to turning into a grant after five years. Moreover, he also gets $12,000 as a flat grant; and he pays such low interest on his mortgage (2.5 percent compared to 5.5 percent in Israel proper) that he saves $40,000 in mortgage payments over twenty years. Small wonder then that a settlement of 25,000 residents such as Ma'ale Adimmim near Jerusalem, on the way to the Dead Sea, has many young families that could not afford to own an apartment in Jerusalem.”
Note: So, the Israeli government is exploiting Israeli poverty by sending them out into the OT. The money for these settlement could go inside of Israel, but the Israeli government wants the OT land too much to do that. Therefore, they take advantage of the desperation of some of the poor in Israel.
“Someone paid for it, though. According to the government's master plan for settlements, the establishment of Ma'ale Adimmim in 1974 meant the expulsion of the Bedouin tribe of Jahalin, whose members grazed their flocks there. Some 12,000 acres, the size of Tel Aviv today, were allocated to Ma'ale Adimmim, and more than 25,000 people now live there. Nor do government subsidies stop with money for housing. Living in a settlement like Ma'ale Adimmim (ten minutes from the Mount Scopus campus of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem) means, among many other benefits, that income taxes are reduced by 10 percent, health taxes by 30 percent, and kindergarten fees by 50 percent.”
Note: Of course, this meant that a non-Israeli tribe would be driven off of their land. Oh, how the oppressed becomes the oppressor when it comes to the Israeli settler. What the poor in Israel need to do is get together in solidarity with the people in the OT and rise against the imperialist government of Israel to make them stop exploiting the both of them for land. These settlements are not the answer. It’s turning workers against workers, just like the Capiatlists in Israel want the situation to do.
“In comparison to Israelis within the Green Line, settlers are thus doing better economically (or at least they were until the beginning of the current Intifada).”
Note: The Israeli government is deliberately making things better for those outside of the Green line to encourage a complete takeover of the OT.
“The ultra-Orthodox settlements are fairly large (Betar Illit, 13,000; Qiryat Sefer, 12,000), and also relatively poor. Most of the residents can't even afford to buy ordinary apartments in the settlements. They get all sorts of subsidies that the other settlers don't.”
Note: Despite what some people around her might think, the ultra-Orthodox Jews living in the OT are not necessarily there for religious reasons. They might very well be there for economic reasons.
If you want to take Israel's poor into consideration, the source of their poverty and exploitation goes right back to the source for the Palestinian's poverty and exploitation. The source is the Israeli government.
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