Poor Israel

Poverty rates in Israel are rising but, as Emad Gad writes, many are in denial

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In the Western media, Israel is always portrayed as an advanced, Western democracy placed in a completely incongruous regional environment. With time, the global public has come to adopt this view, seeing Israel as a Western nation living in a less developed, backwards environment. In fact, this view is incorrect. In studies of Israeli democracy, many Israeli researchers consider Israel to be a religious democracy or an ethnocracy, where Jews, specifically European Jews, reap the benefits at the expense of non-Jews and Sephardic Jews.

With the release of the poverty report a few weeks ago, the Israeli media has turned its attention to the economic situation in Israel. Revealing rising poverty rates in Israel, the report gave many objective, balanced writers the chance to openly discuss the alarming poverty rates among the Arab population of Israel.

One of the most prominent articles to appear addressing the deteriorating socio-economic situation in Israel was written by Sever Plotzker. Published in Yediot Aharonot on 24 March, the article was entitled, "Where do we live?"

"Less than three months ago, the poverty report was released," Plotzker wrote. "The report found that one in every four citizens and one of every three children in Israel live below the poverty line -- a rate unparalleled in any advanced Western nation. In the US, for example, only 11.5 per cent of the population is poor, while in Scandinavia poverty is virtually unknown.

"Israel has achieved record-making poverty rates among developed nations but it feels nothing. It's enough for there to be modest growth in a particular year and a drop in unemployment to rates that are still considered catastrophic in any normal economy for the basic social services to forget about it and stop the 'celebrations'.

"The self-congratulatory slogans coming out of the government and the applause of the fawning media give the impression that there isn't an economic paradise on earth like Israel today and that foreign delegations are knocking on the door for entry. One could conclude that everything is great here; we're overflowing with wealth. Indeed, one might conclude that our biggest problem is determining which investment group will win this or that government contract and why. Our second most important national problem is whether we have enough airline flights to carry all those Israelis who want to spend the Passover vacation abroad.

"The stock exchange is flourishing, profits are at a peak, and the salaries of senior executives continue to leap -- they're even higher than wages received by senior executives in Britain, for example. But what is Britain compared to us? Israelis are building New York, infiltrating Bucharest, and taking over Beijing. The new shekel is no longer the currency of exchange, but one million new shekels. Indeed, it is no longer appropriate to talk about less than that in any field."

Continuing under the subtitle, "Are we living in the same state?" Plotzker continues, "apparently the answer is no. We are not living in the same Israel that has been at the tail end of the industrialised world for more than a decade and is unable to bridge the gap in the standard of living between it and the West -- indeed, is unable to bridge the gap in growth with Asia. We are not living in the same Israel which is suffering gravely from a lack of basic investment in human and material infrastructure and whose social services are finding it difficult to do their jobs and are slowly being strangled, some from a lack of financial resources and some from a lack of benefit.

"What is all this talk? We're all living in a great country worthy of the imitation and envy of the entire world, a nation whose clever, wonderful government is instituting revolutionary reforms at a rate inspiring international pride, a nation that manages rapid trains, with wide boulevards, whose students consistently occupy one of the top spots in education around the world. There is nothing like us in the world.

"We do not live in the state of Israel where people wait for years for justice, a nation where law enforcement is a joke. We don't live in a state that has become the third largest in the world for trafficking in women. We do not live in a state where tax evasion has become a widespread phenomenon encompassing broad sectors of the population.

"What is this talk? We live in a great country, in a Disneyland of luxury and fantasy, in an economy being liberalised from one day to the next, in a state undergoing daily privatisation that is stable as never before. Watch out, America, we're right behind you.

"Are we living in a country where daily violence has come to constitute a national danger? In a state lacking hospitals, cemeteries, and schools? In a state where income gaps have become as deep as the West, if not deeper? No and no. We live in a great country where every citizen receives exactly what he deserves and feels content and satisfied, a citizen who is happy just to turn on the television. We live in a country of unlimited opportunity, where everyone can invest one million shekels in blue-chip stocks and make 10 million shekels three months later.

"Finally, we most certainly do not live in a country that controls millions of people suffering from hunger and lack of basic political and civil rights, people who hate us and everything we represent. No, we don't live in a country like that. We live on the moon."

Yediot Aharonot online published an article on 23 March entitled, "Half of all Arabs in Israel are poor."

"Statistics in a report prepared by the Central Bank of Israel on the status of Arab citizens of Israel in 2004 show that half of all Arab families in Israel are poor," the article said. "Israeli Arabs, who represent 20 per cent of the Israeli population, suffer from low economic development, have high unemployment rates, and work in low-wage jobs. Statistics from Central Bank of Israel show that 46.2 per cent of all Israeli Arab families were poor in 2003."

The article adds, "the main problem faced by Israeli Arabs when knocking on the doors of the job market is a low educational level and the lack of appropriate jobs, particularly in Arab villages, in addition to obstacles preventing employment in certain jobs in the Jewish sector. The percentage of Israeli Arabs participating in the labour market is less than Israeli Jews, although Arab youth enter the job market usually at a younger age, largely because their families require additional sources of income. In addition, they do not serve in the Israeli army.

"Since the majority of Arabs in the job market work in menial labour, they leave the job market earlier. Thus we find a tangible gap between the percentage of Jews and Arabs in the job market, even among older workers.

"Unemployment among Arab men is higher than the rate among Jewish men because of the difficulties Arabs face finding jobs. Over the last decade the gap has grown. It reached its peak in 2002, but it has declined over the last two years with a jump of eight per cent in the number of employed. This is due to the sharp rise in the number of those who have withdrawn from the labour market. The Bank of Israel report shows that unemployment in recent years has touched the Arab sector more than others.

"As far as wages among the Arab population are concerned, the report states that the rise in the average wage among Arabs was slow over the last decade when compared to the Jewish population. The report finds that the increase in wages among uneducated workers was similar in the Jewish and Arab sectors, but among educated workers, the increase in wages among Arabs was much slower than the increases among Jews given the difficulties Arabs face in finding a job that suits their qualifications."

To read more about the socio-economic status of Arabs in Israel and discrimination against Arabs, please visit the website of Arabs Against Discrimination www.aad-online.org.