March 27, 2007
Dear friends,
Ordinary Israelis may not appreciate the fact yet (our job is clear!) but they need one-democratic-state desperately.
Here are some links to articles about the "dark" side of Zionism for ordinary Jews in Israel--increasing poverty, insecurity, loss of pensions and jobs, hunger, and the need to wage defensive general strikes against the attack on the well-being of ordinay Jews (as well as non-Jews, of course) carried out by the Israeli billionaires and generals who constitute the ruling class. (Not to mention the psychological trauma of Jews caused by living in fear of all the non-Jews who surround Israel, a trauma and fear which, of course, would not exist were it not for Zionist leaders' determination to maintain Arab anger at Jews - by committing atrocities against non-Jews in the name of Jews, like decades of ethnic cleansing and bombing Gazans and Lebanese last year-- as a means of social control over the Jews.)
The Israeli ruling class, under cover of "defending Jews from anti-Semitic Arabs out to kill them" is diverting wealth that should be providing prosperity for everyone in Palestine/Israel instead of into the bulging pockets of the Israeli ruling class. Zionism is not only a racist attack on Palestinians, it is a monstrous scam against ordinary Jews who suffer from it, whether they understand its true role or not (and unfortunately, many do not.) One of the main purposes of Zionist racist attacks on Palestinians (perfectly analogous in this respect to KKK attacks on blacks in the Jim Crow era American South) is to prevent solidarity from developing between ordinary Jews and non-Jews who, objectively, are both under attack by the same common enemy.
--John
Fear of losing pensions in Israel, which contains this excerpt:
Israel's growing population of retirees has been reduced to a state of profound economic insecurity in recent years, as self-styled economic reformers have hollowed out the Jewish state?s time-honored system of care for the elderly. Pensions have been frozen. Social security payments, known in Israel as national insurance, have been relentlessly whittled away ? cut by 35% in a single decade. Health care and prescription drug coverage have been slashed, along with funds for senior housing and assisted living.It's part of a deliberate move by Jerusalem policy-makers to modernize Israel's economy, by which they mean to remodel it along American lines. Determined to bury the socialist ethos of Israel's founders, successive governments since the mid-1980s have slashed income supports and welfare payments even as they've privatized and deregulated industries, opened capital markets to international competition and reduced workers' job security (they call it 'liberalizing labor laws'). Over the past three years, under the economic leadership of Benjamin Netanyahu, the reforms have been ramped up to a revolution.
The results have been entirely predictable: respectable economic growth, booming foreign investment, a new class of millionaires, and an explosion of poverty and hunger. In just one generation, Israel has gone from the most egalitarian nation in the industrialized world to one of the least egalitarian...
And then there was the simple,
glaring fact of poverty. Too many Israelis had reached the
point where their own personal security seemed more
precarious than their country's. The plight of the seniors
was particularly compelling, because it spoke to youngsters
worried about their parents.
Poverty in Israel among Jews as well as non-Jews:
Poverty in Israel — Hunger and homelessness surge in the Jewish state
Poverty: The Meeting Ground between Arab and Jewish Women in Israel
from which comes this excerpt:
Yet appearances are misleading. Recent measures taken by Israel’s government to undermine the welfare state have harmed women first of all, both Arab and Jewish. Of the Jewish, many who in the past had gained a foothold in the middle class find themselves shunted to the margins of society. The income supplements they depended on have been whisked out from under them. The same cuts have worsened the plight of Arab women.Despite the fact that both groups, indeed the lower classes in general on both the Arab and Jewish sides, suffer from an erosion in living-standards – and often for identical reasons – there is an utter lack of dialogue between them.
Israel Poverty: One In Three Children Are Hungry
Israel’s age of austerity, which begins:
IF THERE'S MONEY FOR THE SETTLERS, THEN THERE SHOULD BE MONEY FOR US The Israeli government adopted an austerity budget in September, cutting social welfare to pay for defence and settlements. Israelis were already suffering from the worst recession since 1953. Now one family in five does not have enough to eat.
Labor strikes by Jewish workers in Israel
from which comes this excerpt:
Israel is facing a wave of social unrest and industrial action, in opposition to the sweeping attacks on living standards by the Likud government of Ariel Sharon.On September 21 [2004], the Israeli General Federation of Labour (Histadrut) held a general strike in protest against the ongoing failure of the government to pay wages to local authorities? employees. Some 400,000 public sector workers across 265 municipalities came out, bringing the state to a halt. Flights, seaports, railways, post offices, banks and the stock exchange were all shut down, whilst hospitals and the fire service operated on an emergency footing. Schools, day-care centres, kindergartens, and universities were also affected.
The strike also included the Israeli Electrical Corporation, Mekorot National Water Company, oil refineries, public works departments, and the Eilat-Ashkelon Pipeline Company. Border crossings were closed, and all government offices including civilian employees in the Israeli Defence Force and at the Negev Nuclear Research Plant were on strike.
Calling the strike was forced upon Histadrut by the depth of opposition and anger amongst workers.
The strike was called following a breakdown in negotiations between the Histadrut and the government regarding the payment of salaries to large sections of workers that have remained unpaid for months and in some cases years.
Israeli bosses demand legal action against general strike
which begins:
An almost total shutdown of Israeli industry following a general strike has been threatened with legal action after The Manufacturers Association and the Federation of Israeli Chambers of Commerce have asked the National Labour Court to end the strike.The Manufacturers Association and the Federation of Israeli Chambers of Commerce (FICC) appealed to the National Labor Court Wednesday morning to order an end to the general strike in the public sector called by the Histadrut and to invite all relevant parties to an urgent discussion on the matter. The Association estimated that the strike would cost the economy NIS 500m. per day, Israel Radio reported.
The court was expected to address the petitions at 4pm on Wednesday.
At Ben-Gurion airport, flights were being allowed to land, but passengers were not receiving their luggage. However, exceptions would be made for the basketball team from Ljubljana who has come to play Maccabi Tel Aviv as well as for Egyptian Intelligence Minister Omar Suleiman who was expected to arrive via private plane.
The Histadrut labor federation general public-sector strike began at 6am Wednesday, shutting down all government offices and bringing outgoing traffic at the country's airports and seaports to a halt.
General strike threatens to paralyze Israel
which starts out this way:
JERUSALEM: An Israeli public service strike ended Wednesday after just eight hours, when the government agreed to pay local workers all their back wages.The open-ended strike was expected to shut down most services including Israeli airports and seaports, but from the morning, as the two sides kept in contact, it appeared that it would not last long enough to do significant damage.
An indication that the strike was not as harsh as expected came from Israel's airport, a traditional target of work stoppages. Most planes took off and landed more or less on schedule as an "exceptions committee" approved many flights.
General strikes in Israel encompass a wide array of services, and much of the country was paralyzed. Government offices were shuttered, and state-run utilities operated on skeleton staffs, carrying out no repairs. A Histadrut spokesman said as many as 150,000 workers throughout the country walked off the job.
Source: O-D-S mailing list, posted by John
Spritzler