In need of self-restraint
Decision to build lavish residence for PM at this time comes at worst possible timing
Just like the wet dream of the ruler of an oil emirate, and just like a crossbreeding between the Sydney Opera House and a dinosaur – this is what the drawings of the planned prime minister’s official residence - which will become our new government symbol should the protests fail - look like. The residence that is expected to cost NIS 650 million (roughly $160 million.) The one that was approved during a session of a government that could not even limp to the finish line of its term in office. And as to the quality of this term in office, well, you already know all about that.
It is easy to pick on the timing, so let’s start there: Rumors of the recession have not yet reached our decision-makers apparently. Imagine a situation whereby the British prime minister decides now of all times to complain about the state of plumbing at 10 Downing Street – certainly not a huge castle that also features serious parking limits, severe safety problems, and interesting post-Victorian plumbing. Imagine that while trying to lead Britain out of the gravest economic crisis it has faced in the past 50 years, he and his cabinet would decide, now of all times, to build a new and upgraded residence.
What would the people tell him? To at least show a little restrain until the worst is behind us. At least he should not show his voters that they will enjoy neither fair minimum wages nor humane disability allowances in the coming years, while he is able to maintain “government symbols” made of shining marble.
Don’t use my tax money
Yet self-restraint is not a proper Israeli quality, and those who already made it to the perks of power find their modest residence inadequate. It has no arrangements for wartime aimed at protecting the prime minister’s official residence, say those who try to defend the decision to spend NIS 650 million, while at the same time they cry about the lack of funding needed to build mobile rocket shelters in the south. The current situation is inconvenient for employees of the Prime Minister’s Office, add the proponents. Yet from the point of view of hundreds of thousands of citizens who still don’t have a bomb shelter in this country, both in the north and south, convenience should certainly be postponed to another time; to better times.
If this country is still home to hospitals where patients are held in temporary shacks and people who live in cardboard caravans and students who study in trailers, all of the above come before a symbol of government, because the welfare of all of the above – rather than the lavishness of government – is the purpose of government.
Automatic critics such as myself are also countered by those who say that the prime minister needs a large home in order to host ceremonies for particularly large delegations, which cannot be done today. Again, they wave the “symbol of government” and modesty of the current home in Jerusalem’s Rehavia neighborhood.
Yet I am unfamiliar with a large delegation that cannot be hosted at the Presidential Residence, if needed, and I am unfamiliar with the need to have an empty symbol for non-existent wealth, except for the need for pride and pretentiousness. I am no longer willing to fund the latter with my taxes in a country of intolerable gaps between rich and poor and of ongoing wars. What about you?
