The Histadrut and the “social lobby”, a medley of advocacy groups galvanized by the Histadrut, are the most bitter opponents of Finance Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s economic reforms. The reforms are hurting society’s weaker strata, especially the poor, they claim.

Although no one needs to starve in Israel, there are indeed hundreds of thousands of unemployed as well as those dependent on supplementary income who, caught between low incomes and monopoly-inflated costs, find it difficult to make ends meet.