Poverty rate in Israel higher than in Mexico

Editor’s Note:  The following story, “The Threat from Within,  is reprinted with permission from The Forward, in which it appears in the August 27 issue.

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In May, when Israel was invited to join the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, a 31-nation club of the world’s most elite, developed economies, Finance Minister Yuval Steinitz called it “a badge of honor.” Indeed, it is.

Acceptance means that Israel can now access sources of capital investment available only to developed countries, but it means something even more rewarding: It’s a legitimization of the tiny country’s economic strength and innovation capacity, reinforcing the image of the scrappy “start-up nation” — where once early Zionists made the barren deserts bloom, now their 21st-century heirs are driving a high-speed technological revolution.

No surprise that the number of millionaires in Israel soared by 43% in just one year, from 2008 to 2009, a rate bested only by Hong Kong and India.

But the “start-up nation” narrative hides another story: Poverty in Israel is more widespread than in any of the other OECD countries, worse than even Turkey and Mexico. Almost one in five Israelis live in poverty, according to OECD guidelines; for children, the rate is nearly one in three.

This economic inequality, among the highest in the world, poses a serious danger to Israeli society beyond that caused by war or terrorism. Poverty in Israel is a direct result of non-employment, the fact that many Israelis will not or cannot work. The two largest segments of citizens outside the labor force are Haredi men, 67% of whom study full-time, helped by government subsidy, and Arab women, 80% of whom are at home, prevented by culture and discrimination from participating in the workforce. A government report issued in July said that Haredi unemployment alone will cost the Israeli economy $1.55 billion in 2010 — 300% higher than the comparable cost in 2000.

And the consequences are not just economic. Those who don’t work generally don’t serve in the Israel Defense Forces, absenting themselves from a fundamental pillar of Israeli life, sowing resentment among the majority and, given the high birth rate among the poor, threatening military capacity in the future. With nearly half of Israeli primary school students either Haredi or Arab, who will defend the country in 20 years?

‘When this country was very poor, we had our act together,” notes Dan Ben-David, an economist and executive director of the Taub Center for Social Policy Studies in Israel, a think tank and research center supported by the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee.

“Now the percentage of families dependent on government is growing all the time.”

“The fundamental problem is that a large and increasing share of the Israeli population is receiving neither the tools nor the conditions to work in a modern community,” he says. “It harms them personally. It harms us nationally.”

It should be noted that while Ben-David’s data are generally accepted, his interpretation has been disputed. Gidi Grinstein, founder and president of the Reut Institute, another nonprofit, nonpartisan think tank in Israel, believes that the Haredi community has awakened to the challenge and is entering the workforce in ever growing numbers.

“Very few societies drive themselves over the abyss without survival mechanisms kicking in,” Grinstein argues.

Nonetheless, among the Haredim this shift is slow and fraught with resistance. Back in June, ultra-Orthodox protests against a high court ruling on a school segregation case nearly shut down Jerusalem for a day, but another ruling issued earlier that week was arguably more important. The court ordered that, by the end of this year, the government stop paying welfare to an estimated 11,000 married yeshiva students who chose study instead of work.

While Haredi political leaders have vowed to restore those cuts, they must be rebuffed; government action is essential to turn around this dangerous trend. The numbers of Haredi unemployed surely would be even higher had not then-finance minister Benjamin Netanyahu instituted cuts in child allowances and yeshiva subsidies in 2003.

But simply cutting off benefits won’t address the root causes of non-employment, and is hardly the right step for a moral society. Israeli Arabs want to work, but are isolated from employment centers and discriminated against by employers; Arab women face the additional hurdle of living in a culture where female autonomy is suppressed. In far too many Haredi communities, full-time learning is prized above economic self-sufficiency — a relatively new phenomenon. Ben-David points out that 30 years ago, the rate of non-employment for Haredim was 21%. Now it is more than three times that amount.

Clearly what’s needed is a committed investment in education and social programs to provide the wherewithal for these significant minorities to integrate into the high-tech economy of Israel’s future. There truly is no time to lose. Ben-David estimates that if present growth rates continue, by 2040, 78% of Israel’s children will be studying in the Haredi or Arab education systems.

And if the fate of worldwide Jewry is tied to the fate of Israel, as we believe, then this stark situation — generally hidden from most Diaspora Jews — must not be ignored or denied. Ben-David has been amassing and analyzing this worrying economic data for years, but only recently put aside his concerns about going public because of the urgency of the message.

“This country is on an unsustainable long-term trajectory,” he warns. “We’re a very young country — if we educate our youth, the sky’s the limit. But we’re quickly reaching the point of no return. This is the only Jewish country we have. This better concern the Jewish people.”

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Preceding provided by The Forward via the Trylon SMR Agency

Women’s weekend set for Oct. 22-24 at Camp Mountain Chai

SAN DIEGO (Press Release)– Dynamic, energizing, stimulating, heimish and lots of fun – that’s how women have described their  weekend at camp — Camp Mountain Chai.

The 4^th Annual Women’s Weekend is coming up October 22, 23 and 24.

The $225 fee includes a comfortable charter bus to the camp in an idyllic setting in the San Bernardino mountains; healthy and delicious kosher cuisine;  workshops; social activities, games, yoga, crafts, hikes and a ropes course, and singing and dancing.  A highlight will be spirited, inspiring Shabbat services with Rabbi Lenore Bohm.

Workshops will include yoga with Lee Fowler Schwimmer, (Yoga Through Jewish Eyes); Torah study with Rabbi Bohm; book discussion; Israeli Jazzercize; music (bring instruments); chanting; spiritual nature hike; creating mezzuzot and more. The outdoor havdalah service has been an especially moving part of the program.

“Happy campers” have been all ages (18 and over), including women in their 70s who never went to camp before (and keep coming back); mother/daugher pairs, sisters, and even out-of-town friends and family.

For anyone worried about whether camp is too rustic for them, the cabins are carpeted and heated (it may be pleasantly crisp in October), and there are plenty of electrical outlets if you really need to plug in.

The bus will leave from the La Jolla JCC at noon Friday and will depart from Camp 12:30 pm Sunday, returning to the JCC about 2:30-3 pm.

The Women’s Weekend Committee Cochairs are Roz Brotman and Diana Lerner.

You can check the camp website,  for more information about Camp Mountain Chai.

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Preceding provided by Camp Mountain Chai

‘Non-Aryan’ surprises found in Hitler’s family tree

LONDON (WJC)–Nazi leader Adolf Hitler possibly had Jewish as well as African ancestors, according to a report by the British newspaper ‘Daily Express’, citing new DNA tests done in Belgium.

Samples taken from Hitler’s relatives link him to both the Jewish community and people from northern Africa. Belgian journalist Jean-Paul Mulders said he had investigated Hitler’s DNA after managing to lay his hands on a serviette dropped by the dictator’s great-nephew Alexander Stuart-Houston in New York. He said he got a second sample from an Austrian cousin of Hitler, a farmer known as Norbert H., the report said.

The DNA tests revealed a form of the Y-chromosome that is rare in Germany and the rest of Western Europe, but common among Jewish and North African groups. Experts now think that Hitler had migrant ancestors who settled in his homeland. Mulders said both the test samples had a form of genetic material known as ‘Haplopgroup E1b1b’, proving an “irrefutable link” to the Nazi leader.

“It is most commonly found in the Berbers of Morocco, in Algeria, Libya and Tunisia, as well as among Ashkenazi and Sephardic Jews. One can from this postulate that Hitler was related to people whom he despised,” Mulders was quoted as saying. The link to Hitler’s ‘migrant ancestors’ could go back anything from three to 20 generations, said experts.

Ronny Decorte, a professor of Forensic Genetics and Molecular Archeology from the Catholic University of Leuven in Belgium, told the ‘Daily Express’: “Hitler would not have been pleased about this. Race and blood was central in the world of the Nazis. Hitler’s concern over his descent was not unjustified. He was apparently not ‘pure’ or ‘Aryan’.”

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Preceding provided by World Jewish Congress

Norwegian government pension fund withdraws investments from companies in Israel and Malaysia citing ‘grossly unethical activity’

OSLO (WJC)–The Government Pension Fund of Norway (GPFG) has divested from two Israeli firms and a Malaysian business claiming they engage in “grossly unethical activity”.

The Ministry of Finance, which sets the financial guidelines for the fund, has excluded Africa-Israel Investments and its subsidiary Danya Cebus, as well as Malaysian company Samling Global.

“The decision to exclude these companies from the GPFG is based on the Council on Ethics assessment that they are contributing to or are themselves responsible for grossly unethical activity,” Finance Minister Sigbjørn Johnsen was quoted as saying. Africa-Israel Investments is the majority owner of Danya, which develops Israeli settlements in the West Bank, the Norwegian Ministry of Finance said in a press release.

“The Council on Ethics bases its recommendation on the fact that the international community is united in the view that the area east of the 1967 line is occupied territory and as such comes under the purview of the fourth Geneva Convention. Several United Nations Security Council resolutions and an International Court of Justice advisory opinion have concluded that the construction of Israeli settlements in occupied Palestinian territory is prohibited under this Convention,” says Johnsen.

Samling Global, a producer of timber, plywood, veneer and palm oil, has operations in Malaysia and Guyana that contribute to illegal logging and environmental damage, the Ministry claimed.

The fund, which is managed by Norway’s Central Bank, owned around US$ 1.2 million worth of stock in Africa-Israel Investments. The GPFG’s total assets are worth US$ 450 billion.

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Preceding provided by World Jewish Congress

Canadian Jewish Congress says Ottawa should decline to honor anti-Semitic former mayor

OTTAWA (WJC)–The Canadian Jewish Congress (CJC) has criticized posthumous honors for the first female mayor of Ottawa because of her opposition to taking in Jewish refugees during World War II.

CJC officials, writing in the ‘Ottawa Citizen’, charged that Charlotte Whitton, who served as mayor of Canada’s capital city from 1951 to 1956 and from 1960 to 1964, “never publicly recanted her anti-Semitism and sought no atonement for the dire consequences of her actions. Her poisoning of the well helped close Canada’s door to Jewish refugee orphans, dooming them to their fate in the Holocaust.”

Last year, the Ottawa Committee of the Famous Five Foundation had asked the Historic Sites and Monuments Board of Canada to recognize Whitton for her pioneering work as a politician, feminist and social worker. Whitton’s role in blocking non-British refugee children – 80 percent of whom were Jewish – is cited in the 1982 book None is Too Many authored by the historians Irving Abella and Harold Troper.

According to the book, which takes its title from a phrase uttered by a Canadian bureaucrat in response to a query on how many Jews Canada would accept after the war, Whitton was an “influential voice” in the early 1940s, when she served on the Canadian Welfare Council and the Canadian National Committee on Refugees. She “nearly broke up” the inaugural meeting of the committee on refugees “by her insistent opposition and very apparent anti-Semitism,” the book says. The Canadian Jewish Congress, it adds, considered Whitton – who died in 1975 – “an enemy of Jewish immigration.”

Canadian Jewish Congress CEO Bernie Farber told the ‘Jewish Telegraphic Agency’ he was confident that “given [Whitton] acting on her anti-Semitism, it is highly unlikely she will receive honors from any level of government.”

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Preceding provided by World Jewish Congress

Ahmadinejad calls Iran’s new drone ‘a messenger of death’

TEHERAN (WJC)–President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has unveiled Iran’s first bomber drone and said it would serve as a “messenger of death” to Iran’s enemies.

The ‘Karrar’ unmanned fighter plane can carry two 115-kilo bombs, or one precision bomb twice that weight. The drone reportedly has a range of 1,000 km, not enough to reach Israel.

On Monday, state television reported that the Iranian military had opened production lines for two new types of assault boats. Iran frequently announces advances in military technology, boasting of self-sufficiency in the face of international sanctions and efforts by the West to isolate the country. However, US State Department Spokesman P.J. Crowley warned the new weapons could reduce Iran’s security as Washington partners with allies in the region to counter a potential Iranian threat.

“This is one of the reasons why we believe that if Iran continues on the path that it’s on, that it actually might find itself less secure,” he told reporters in Washington.

The Iranian announcements came amid growing international concerns about Iran’s nuclear program. On Saturday, Russian experts began loading fuel rods into the reactor at the Bushehr nuclear power station. Iran has maintained all along that the site will produce energy, but the United States and some other international observers remain unconvinced.

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Preceding provided by World Jewish Congress

Pig’s head at Lithuanian synagogue door enrages community

KAUNUS, Lithuania (WJC)–Jewish organizations in Lithuania have strongly condemned an apparent neo-Nazi attack in which a pig’s head was left Saturday at the entrance of a synagogue in the city of Kaunas.

“The Lithuanian Jewish Community and the Religious Community of Lithuanian Jews judge this as Nazi provocation aimed at insulting the ethnic and religious feelings of Lithuanian Jews,” the heads of the two organizations, Simonas Alperavicius and Chief Rabbi Chaim Burstein, said in a joint statement.

Simonas Gurevicius, executive director of the Lithuanian Jewish community, told the news agency AFP that the incident should be treated as an attack on all believers, not only Jews. “We hope that Lithuanian society will not be impassive, as this act of a few anti-Semitic vandals does not reflect the attitude of Lithuanian society.”

Kaunas police have launched a formal investigation but there are no suspects so far, according to the ‘Baltic News Service’. 

Lithuania was once home to a 220,000-strong Jewish community, and Vilnius was a cultural hub and world center for the study of the Torah, also known as the ‘Jerusalem of the North’. At the end of the 19th century, there were over 100 synagogues in Vilnius. During the Holocaust, 95 percent of Lithuania’s Jews perished at the hands of the Nazis and their Lithuanian collaborators.  

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Preceding provided by World Jewish Congress