I realize although Israel does have a wealthy rich look appearance to it most of the money is still in the hands of a small number who control every thing squeeze strangle the majority even religion where Israel trys to limit religion to Orthodox does not even want to allow reformed conservative any other but a primative minority to control every thing God save us from the Jewish Pharoahs RIGHT ??? Thank You... M. S.

Look at the regular citizen in Saudi Arabia, Yemen, etc., etc., etc.All that oil money and they live in filth, ignorance and poverty ... except for the oil rich masters.

Israel is not like Saudi Arabia, Egypt, etc., etc....the places you describe where the very few oil rich strangle the ordinary citizen and the Muslim extremists rule the streets..... Israel ranked #2 in education expenditure...THAT is not a sign of an oligarchy like in the Muslim countries...In addition, in Israel the regular citizen can and will voice his/her opposition to the ultra Orthodox without fear of being stoned or hanged to death unlike Saudi Arabia, Iran, etc., etc.You have no idea what you are talking about or perhaps you do and are just trying to project the wrongdoings of your friends on the only Jewsih state...as an anti-Semite.

Israel is only just starting to leave behind decades of socialism whereby the government owned all the big companies, competition was not encouraged and for the monopolies that did exist very little was done to break them up. Bibi as Sharon's finance minister introduced economic reforms which revolutionized the economy. The religious are nothing more than high profile scapegoats for the secular elite who want them to replace their black hats with baseball caps and Torah study with studying the daily newspaper. Fact is their contribution to the economic problems is minimal. The real problem is socialist attitudes still remain and we need to develop our economy the way the west did decades ago. We need privatization, and legislation to break up monopolies. Bezeq was once government owned, the managers got paid every month but they got paid no matter what so they didn't make an go to the trouble of investing in infastructure and so a home phone was a luxury. If it hadn't been for HOT providing competition for the first time and and the Bezeqs part privatization the internet revolution might have passed Israel by. We need to break the power of the Histadrut who regularly bring the country to a standstill, the days of all powerful unions has come to an end in the US & Europe and Israel needs to do the same to be competitive. Things we need to do is stop issuing work permits to arabs & filipinos and instead start a campaign to get unemployed Israel's ( religious & secular ) into working rather than acting as though they are to good for the low pay jobs. Israel has problems but its not because of the religious its because of its socialist past which it is only now trying to ditch and the social justice campaigners want to take us backwards to the days when Israel couldn't compete.

Yes indeed. The core of it's economy: LIVING ON INTERNATIONAL WELFARE.