Poor people at the roulette wheel
How can there be one million hungry children in Israel when 350,000 Israelis plan on going abroad for the High Holydays
In that old list one thing stood out: the list of parents' professions, a relic of a bygone era. "Worker", "cobbler", "plumber", "diamond polisher". My first-grade class consisted of a cross-section of pre-state Israel, what was then called "the Yishuv". Most of these families were not deprived, but by today's standards, they would be said to be on the "poverty line". In my class, there was only one child who we felt came from a poor household.
There is poverty in Israel. Too much poverty. But there are not one million hungry children in this country. On the other hand, there are many more citizens with more than $1 million in their pocket, private safe, in the bank or overseas, than we know of, or even assume.
The numbers don't add up
Of course there is serious poverty here, and it is the state's duty, along with all of us, to stamp it out. At the same time, if there really are one million hungry children, looking wistfully at a chocolate-spread sandwich, then how come, as the papers have reported, "350,000 Israelis will be going abroad for the High Holydays"? Something does not add up here. Too many hungry children will be spending the next few weeks at all-inclusive hotels in Turkey, walking the streets of Rome or the avenues of New York.
Evidence of this can be found in the pages of the newspapers – particularly the crime sections. A few years ago, the safe of a bank in south Tel Aviv, one of the city's poorest areas, was broken into. Millions of dollars were stolen, but most of the safe's owners did not report the true value of the contents so as not to alert the tax authorities.
From time to time we read about burglaries at private homes, not necessarily of Israel's wealthiest citizens, and again the thieves are walking away with millions of shekels in cash and jewelry.
You want more evidence? Take a peek over the shoulders of gamblers in the casinos of Romania, Hungary, Poland, Croatia and the Czech Republic. Tens of thousands of dollars are being gambled there every night, until the early hours of the morning. It's not hard to discern these gamblers' national identity. And they're not (leading Israeli businessmen) Yitzhak Tshuva, Nochi Dankner or Lev Leviev.
So where's the money coming from? The conclusion is that there are two, at least, parallel economies. When the poor protest, with every apparent right, the members of the other economy prefer silence, keeping away from the eye of the tax authorities and the heart which would make them help the poverty stricken. People here are making a fortune, and they are richer than we (and the tax authorities) know.
What to do? Nothing I've said here should take away from the harshness of life for those who cannot provide for themselves and for whom a national effort must be made to lift them out of poverty. And yet, it will hard to recruit me to help my electrician, who once produced a wad of $50,000 in front of my eyes, tied up in elastic bands, on his way to a gambling holiday. He, apparently, will be one of the 350,000 Israelis going abroad these High Holydays.
