By midday every Saturday, the mile-long main drag of Abu Gosh – an Arab village twelve miles west of Jerusalem – is jammed with hundreds of Israeli cars. Abu Gosh’s restaurants, shops and markets are crowded with Israeli families who made it a tradition to eat and shop here when Jerusalem’s Jewish shops are closed for the Sabbath. Even today, when incited Arab mobs are attacking Jewish neighborhoods fifteen minutes drive away from here, this peaceful tradition persists; nor can you discern any tension here, except for that of scurrying waiters and busy cashiers servicing the many customers.

In 1977, after being deposed from a half century in power, Labour politicians and intellectuals bitterly accused a public of being “riffraff” and black-hats of stealing “their” country. An old guard socialist leader suggested the voting public must be replaced with a better one. Since then it has become customary for our politicians and media to blame “the public” for everything, even when it just reacts to misguided and inept leadership.

If we have an extremely autocratic and secretive government, constantly making backroom deals at the public’s expense, it is because the public is not democratic enough. If the shekel falls, “the public” is guilty of a run on the dollar, even when few were permitted to buy it, and banks and large enterprises made massive purchases. When stock markets collapse, the public is blamed for panicking, although banks urged them to buy their stock funds at speculative highs, and markets are routinely manipulated.

Capitalism created, undoubtedly, the most momentous advances in human welfare in the last millennium. In less than three centuries, it has extended and enriched human life to a greater extent than in the former ten millennia. Liberating masses of people from slaving for mere survival, it has provided many with unimagined wealth and with the potential to do both good and evil on an unprecedented scale.

Like all spontaneous human creations, capitalism was a protracted, complex incremental, perhaps unique, process. It was propelled after 1750 by gains in knowledge, especially in technology. Yet, while both were necessary prerequisites, they were not sufficient by themselves. China, Greece and the Islamic world all excelled in them, yet failed to create sustained economic growth.

As a result of last fall’s violence and the ensuing efforts to rescue the peace process, security concerns have once again eclipsed all other public policy issues in Israel. Despite years of talk about the need for economic reform, therefore, major changes are not likely in the near future. But once the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has some breathing space, there is reason to hope he will do more than talk.