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Photo: Gil Yohanan
Netanyahu, Pushing back positive processes
Photo: Gil Yohanan
Sever Plocker

Netanyahu is the new haredi populist

Op-ed: Israel's prime minister, who rejected economic-social populism his entire professional and political life, has now strongly embraced it in his quick and shameless acceptance of the ultra-Orthodox parties' demands.

Populism isn't dead, it's just adjusting. Adapting itself to a changing political reality. As a result, the damages of the populist thinking and populist action are becoming more difficult to expose and inspect – and are getting worse in retrospect.

  

 

Let's take a look at Greece. The populist left-wing Syriza party has succeeded since its election victory to get into trouble with all the governments and organizations that Greece owes hundreds of billions of euros. Even worse, in their desire to implement their party's populist-nationalistic platform (the leftist populist is usually nationalistic), the Syriza ministers have gotten entangled in a series of decisions originating in the ambition to cancel everything the previous government decided and implemented.

 

The Syriza government has already announced that it is cancelling the higher education reform, which has been praised by all experts; restoring the days of the state television, which failed to meet minimum quality standards; reducing the retirement age and opening the gates of the inflated public service for more employees – all under the disguise of innovative and rational management. The sick, weakened and bleeding Greece did need a recovery program – but not a revolution for the sake of revolution. The new practical populism is turning out to be as dangerous as the old noisy populism.

 

Prime Minister Netanyahu with United Torah Judaism leaders. When their demands were accepted, populism won
Prime Minister Netanyahu with United Torah Judaism leaders. When their demands were accepted, populism won

 

Let's look at the United States. President Barack Obama has been trying with all his poor political power to reach a free trade agreement with the bloc of Asian countries located on the shores of the Pacific Ocean. Who is blocking him? Who is strongly objecting to the agreement? The conservative right of course – alongside the populist Democratic left, which is using excuses that appear, theoretically, to be economically and socially convincing. They are not: The allegedly sophisticated objection to an Asia-America trade deal is identical in its essence and worldview to the violent objection in the end of the previous century to the free trade agreements as part of the World Trade Organization – agreements which increased the welfare of the world's citizens in general, and in the Third World in particular.

 

Let's look at France. Marine Le Pen's rising populist party has tailored a new retrained and polite robe for itself; there is no mention of anti-Semitism, for example. Even if she won't become France's president, Le Pen has already poisoned and polluted the political-cultural discourse in the country.

 

Let's look at the beautiful and egalitarian Finland. The parliament, which was elected in April, will have the second largest Finns party (previously known as The True Finns). The movement hid its populist messages under the rug of twisted wordings, so that even decent and practical citizens would be able to vote for it. And they did.

 

And finally, let's look at ourselves: The coalition agreements between the Likud and the ultra-Orthodox parties emit a strong smell of new populism. The Equal Share of the Burden Law, which was approved in the previous Knesset, during the Netanyahu-Lapid government, reflected a broad consensus and took the nature of the haredi population's life into consideration. As time went by, this law had the ability to considerably weaken activists' absolute control of the haredi audience. That is the reason why the haredi parties' leaders issued an ultimate demand to cancel or at least sterilize the legislation. Their demands were accepted. Populism won.

 

Populism won in other issues too: Zero value added tax on products with supervised prices, generous budgetary funding of the haredi education systems, whose graduates lack any training for work in the 21st century, and an increase in child allowances in a method which perpetuates and deepens the distortions.

 

All these agreements, regardless of how they are worded, will curb and push back the positive processes of integrating the haredi community into the progressive employment circles. They implementation will critically damage the possibility to increase the production and work productivity in Israel. The lack of such an increase will send the economy into recession without a way out.

 

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who rejected economic-social populism his entire professional and political life, has now strongly embraced it. His quick and shameless acceptance of the haredi demands calls for further investigation. It's not just political defilement; it seems Bibi is becoming newly religious, turning into a new haredi populist.

 


פרסום ראשון: 05.04.15, 00:24
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