Deja vu all over again: Thousands gather in Tel Aviv to protest budget
The demonstrators jeered Lapid, calling him a puppet of the captains of Israeli industry, and accusing him of betraying the middle-class Israelis who voted him into power. In addition to the chants from the social justice protests of the summer of 2011, the crowd repeatedly chanted “There’s no future with Lapid and Bibi,” in a play on the name of Lapid’s Yesh Atid (“There is a future”) party.The complaints about the 'tycoons' ring true. This is from 2007, and things have not changed a whole lot since.
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“Instead of a murderous budget that will raise taxes and the income tax paid by workers, the self-employed housewives, and the elderly – the people demand a stop to the free for all for tycoons, to give us back our natural resources and to stop pouring money into isolated settlements,” organizers said in a Facebook event page advertising the protest titled “To the streets! Take from the tycoons, not the people!”
Daphni Leef, the Tel Aviv woman who launched the 2011 protests, said at the beginning of the march that Lapid should “take from those who have and not from those who don’t.”
When asked if the protests were coming back, Leef said, “It’s already back, we’re here in the street. Where it goes depends on what he [Lapid] does. I just hope it doesn’t become violent.”
Haaretz reported yesterday that nineteen families control approximately one third of the revenues of Israel's 500 largest corporations. That's a level that would be intolerable in just about any other country in the world. But it gets worse:
The annual income of the 19 families is equal to 88 percent of the state budget or 54 percent of the business sector's share of GDP.Let those numbers sink in for a while.
But here's what Haaretz is not telling you: Guess which side of the political spectrum most of these nineteen families support?The families all have given campaign contributions to Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and foundations associated with newly installed Israeli President Shimon Peres, WND has learned. Most of the families support major leftist Israeli organizations.
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How did this happen?
The complaints about the 'settlers' are due to the Jewish Home party sitting in the government. While that party ought not to be in this government, the complaints are likely unfair since were it not for the 'isolated settlements' the IDF would have to play a larger and more expensive role in those areas.A Forbes Magazine report last year - that found that twelve groups control 60% of Israel's economy - explained that it wasn't through hard work and competition: Forbes contended the groups constructed their empires, which own about 60 percent of the aggregate market value of all Israeli public companies, using organizational methods that were abolished in the Western world in the 1930s.
But the dream that there will be peace and that it will magically transform our country dies hard in the face of reality.
Labels: IDF, Israeli economy, Tel Aviv
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 5:05 PM
1 Comments:
If Progressive Redistribution can't even work in a country of 7 mil, how bad is it in a country of 300+ mil? Vote out all Progressive New Left Marcuse Marxists everywhere! The confiscation/handouts may sound good, nice, compassionate, etc. but it is and has been a deatheating disaster every time it has been tried throughout history.
I tell my kids: Forget about the economic gap... instead, admire high achievement through preparation, opportunity (and casino luck!), and work. And pay attention to the poor, that they eat, have shelter, and learn to read. (Not that they be kept as paralyzed zombies by marxist strings-attached handouts.)
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