Focusing on a putative pension crisis distracts our attention from the real serious crisis that a worldwide recession is bound to create here.

Our “public channel,” funded by a compulsive tax, does not need to be pluralistic or even-handed. Like other public institutions that lack well-defined ownership, Channel 1 has consequently been taken over by bureaucrats and by undemocratic workers’ unions.

The Goliath of the Israel economy, the Poalim-Leumi bank duopoly, was certain that in this battle too, as in former battles over the last 20 years, it would easily vanquish the outnumbered forces of reform. What a shock, then, that despite its overwhelming force, a daring adversary with a slingshot overwhelmed it.

Mind-bogglingly little attention is being paid to the fierce debate in the legislature over the Bachar Commission banking reform proposals, on which the nation’s democratic fabric and even its very survival depends.