Middle East
Israel
Revelations of Poverty
A recently released local government report concludes that 135,000 Israelis suffer from hunger or malnutrition, a claim that has taken the public by surprise and triggered pointed attacks against Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak, reports Tel Aviv’s centrist Yediot Aharonot (Nov. 23).
“This is a social and national problem of the highest importance,” said Adi Eldar, the report’s author. “I hope that Barak will keep his promise and erase hunger in Israel. These findings are shameful to our society.”
According to Yediot (Nov. 23), the report, which surveyed about one-third of the country’s 260 municipalities, provoked a no-confidence vote on the Barak government in the Israeli parliament that was easily defeated by a vote of 45 to 22 in November.
The government has responded to the uproar by reviving a food program for poor schoolchildren and, according to Tel Aviv’s Ma’ariv (Nov. 23), Barak has instructed the Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs to “find the starving and help them.”
The ministry has already begun collecting the names of the hungry, but social service agencies have countered the prime minister’s swift action with calls for more resources.
Social workers’ union leader Eli Ben Gara appealed for more funds for the health and welfare budget to help the hungry, 45 percent of whom are said to be Arabs. Ben Gara added that Barak “has proved to be the prime minister of the rich, and has neglected to acknowledge the distress in Israel.”
Echoing Ben Gara’s cynicism, Hannah Kim, writing in the liberal Ha’aretz of Tel Aviv (Nov. 23), says that the Israeli leader’s program for reducing poverty—a formula of growth spurred on by resumption of the peace process—rings hollow. On Dec. 20, Yediot reported that the Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs published its official report on poverty, stating that 1998 saw a 15-percent rise over the previous year in the number of Israelis below the poverty line.
Reacting to the ministry report, David Tal, chairman of the Knesset’s Labor and Welfare Committee, was quoted in Yediot: “Regretfully, Prime Minister Barak is only attracted to foreign affairs and doesn’t understand that we have poor and frustrated citizens at home.”
