If Israel suffered two decades of debilitating non-growth, if most Israeli workers earn a pitiful $1,200 a month, if thousands of workers are jobless, and many families cannot make ends meet, a large measure of the blame belongs to the banks. Namely, the Hapoalim-Leumi duopoly and the small coterie of failing bankers that has taken control of them, and of our lives. They’ve wasted our hard-earned savings on reckless loans to cronies (70% of all loans given to 1% of lenders) and created a credit crunch that’s ruined tens of thousands of businesses and stagnated the Negev and Galilee.

Unlike most of our leaders, who are economically illiterate, Netanyahu understands how vital bank reform is. He also has the political courage to challenge the powerful banks in the media, academia, law, and in the “business community” which thrives on monopolies.

If Netanyahu succeeds in finally implementing the reform that the banks have managed to fend off for 20 years, it will immeasurably increase his chances of becoming prime minister again. This is perhaps why so many obstructionists – from the oligarchy’s Hate Bibi Club to the media and the political establishment – are trying to undermine the reform that is virtually a matter of life and death for Israel.

Chief among the obstructionists is Netanyahu’s political rival Ehud Olmert.

Politics and personal ambition, and yes, greed, always seem to trump the national interest.

Olmert must think that Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s days are numbered, so he opened a succession war. Otherwise why would he reveal his hand so crudely by launching just now – when Sharon needs “industrial peace” within the Likud – a campaign against Netanyahu that will make Sharon’s coalition building efforts more difficult?

Why would Olmert risk damaging an economic reform in which Sharon himself is heavily invested? Moreover, why do it when it is about to succeed and when it is the only significant achievement of the Sharon government?

Why would the calculating Olmert demand an increase in the deficit and budget (which he himself charges contains millions of dollars in hidden surpluses) when he knows the catastrophic consequences this could have? And why would he recklessly dismiss the solemn obligation undertaken by the government to cut the deficit and the budget to reform the economy (including financial markets) as a condition for receiving US government loan guarantees?

Is it proper for a vice-premier to treat with such contempt Israel’s obligation to our sole friend and protector, thereby jeopardizing America’s invaluable support?

A COMPARISON between Olmert’s Hebrew interview in Yediot and his English contribution in the Post is revealing.

In the Post, Olmert’s dismissal of Israel’s obligation to the US is not even mentioned. You will also not find in the Post the offensive (to Olmert’s American supporters) charge that “Netanyahu transplants to Israel the extremist worldview of former British prime minister Thatcher. In a rigid and dogmatic way Bibi exhibits a curious admiration for the Thatcher model of unbridled, extremist market economy that does not fit our torn inflamed society. To apply here such a model is to pour oil on a conflagration threatening Israeli society.”

Olmert’s alternative is to propose a massive increase in government intervention in the economy. The arsonist is shouting “Fire!”

Olmert must know what a wide gap separates the government’s “good intentions” to promote industry, create jobs, improve education, and lower the income gap, and their actual catastrophic outcomes.

If he did not learn it from 60 years of Israeli experience, he could have learned from his own failures: As minister of health, he failed to institute a reform of Israel’s costly, distorted, and bankrupt health system. He failed to incorporate as separate entities loss-making government hospitals. As mayor of Jerusalem, he failed to reform the extremely bloated and corrupt municipal apparatus that consumes terribly high taxes; nor did he do anything to lessen the stranglehold of land speculators whose monopoly the government helps maintain by releasing only small tracts of land (usually to those same speculators), making housing costs so prohibitive.

He ignored the flight of Jerusalem’s young, the city’s economic decline, and did little except ask for more government hand-outs.

Olmert has mostly been the champion of the Israeli oligarchy, helping to preserve their monopolistic privileges. One must suspect, therefore, that his cry for higher expenditures for “the weak” is simply another ruse to get more funds so that they could be dispensed to cronies under the guise of promoting social welfare. It seems to matter little that the cost is undermining the kind of reform that can deliver us from our economic misery.

Sharon, take heed: You think you know your enemies. Beware your friends.

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