Lifting Israel Out of Poverty

By Abraham Israel

Israel’s Government has announced a new three-year plan to combat poverty but resembles the efforts of a paramedic applying plaster to a hemorrhaging wound. With 1.63 million Israelis living below the poverty line, the Government plans to help just 242,000 of them over the next three years, leaving 1.4 million without hope. The National Insurance Institute last year counted 775,000 impoverished children, but the Prime Minister is extending a helping hand to 115,000 of them – just 15%.

As director of one of the leading humanitarian charities in Israel, I know how much work there is to be done to combat poverty. At Hazon Yeshaya we are inundated with demands for basic support from people who have been categorized by government agencies as ‘Status A’ – those most desperately in need of help – who cannot exist on the state’s meager handout. We are serving 300,000 hot meals per month to poverty-stricken children and elderly throughout the country.

The Government’s new anti-poverty plan is following our lead. Hazon Yeshaya recognized the need to help lift families out of poverty several years ago and has set up 16 training courses to prepare people to enter the labour market. Our courses in hairdressing, cosmetics, computers, book-keeping and secretarial skills receive no state funding at all, although we have been told by TAMAT (the government agency responsible) that our training is second to none.

With only minimum funding we could expand our program and provide 60 courses around the country, all offered free of charge and at a fraction of the cost of public sector training courses, because of our lower overheads and the business expertise that we bring to the project. Unfortunately, government agencies are not interested in partnering with experienced organizations in the voluntary sector, and great opportunities are being ignored.

While governments have a tendency to focus on those of earning and voting age, charities like ours are focusing more on the neglected elderly and the helpless children. Looking to the future of the Jewish State, we recognize the necessity to lift the next generation of breadwinners out of poverty. Children who go to school with empty bellies today will be lining up for handouts tomorrow if nothing is done to break the cycle of deprivation and disadvantage.

Schools and after-school programs throughout Israel turn to us in desperation when government funding is cut to provide lunches for thousands of children who come to school with nothing to eat, and go to bed starving. Teachers know which are the hungry students because they cannot concentrate in lessons, and their escalating educational and social problems stem from their most basic need for food, which their struggling parents are often unable to provide. While we wait for the government to find the better paid jobs, and for Israel’s growing wealth to percolate down through society, many of these young people will have fallen out of the system and into our growing criminal underclass. Where is the three-year plan to rescue the starving kids who are Israel’s future?

Relying on free market economics to undo decades of historical disadvantage in the weakest sectors of Israel’s complex society is hopelessly naïve. Many of the people who need help on a daily basis are families of new immigrants to Israel, Holocaust survivors, and elderly people who were unable to enter the workforce when they arrived here. Our social responsibility begins with those who are too old and too young to support themselves, those who have escaped persecution to find refuge in the Jewish State, and those who will one day build its future – but only if they have enough to eat today.