Poverty persists in Israel because the poor are manipulated

By relentlessly showering the baffled Knafo with advice and media exposure, Shatil has coopted her to such an extent that she no longer dares to speak to anyone without Shatil being present.

According to Knafo’s associates, every move she makes – meet the finance minister, and on what terms- are dictated by Shatil’s political representatives. They also determine what group is welcome to join the protest and what group to exclude, thus sowing bickering, even violence among the protesting mothers.

Observers witnessed Shatil insisting that only those who accept Knafo’s (namely Shatil’s) authority are entitled to ‘represent’ the protest, though Knafo was never elected by anyone to represent single mothers, nor has anyone given Shatil a mandate to dictate the terms of their protest.

SHATIL HAS a long record of organizing hundreds of ‘social action’ front organizations with distinctly leftist, radically anti-capitalist, post-Zionist and pro-Palestinian agendas. Groups it has sponsored have instigated violent demonstrations against globalization at business conferences (at a time when Israel was desperate for investments; see ‘Hating The Rich’ (December 6, 2001).

Shatil has organized student groups, sometimes consisting of less than a dozen activists, who have been spreading vile propaganda against ‘rich businessmen,’ painting them all as evil exploiters. As Caroline Glick documented (in ‘The Road to Irredentism,’ August 9, 2002), as far back as 1998 The New Israel Fund prepared a conference at the Smithsonian Institute that was so overloaded with far-Left, anti-Israel speakers that the Smithsonian cancelled it.

Shatil has sponsored many ostensible ‘human rights’ organizations that specialize in defaming Israel, including Adala, an Arab group that vilifies Israel in every UN body as undemocratic and even racist because it is Zionist; and Kav La’oved, which at the notorious Durban Conference billed Israel as racist and exploitative, claiming that the intifada was motivated by a revolt against Israel’s exploitation of cheap Arab labor, and that therefore Israel was importing hundreds of thousands of blacks to exploit as cheap labor, helping it to depress wages for Israeli workers.

Dozens of Shatil front organizations are busy indoctrinating two important population segments, new immigrants and the low-paid inhabitants of development towns. As some of its activists acknowledge, they are trying to shift the political balance to the Left. It is no accident, therefore, that once Knafo gained media attention a group of Beduin (among whom Shatil agitators have been active for some time, teaching them about their ‘Palestinian affiliations’) joined the scene to protest Israeli government land policies. This despite the fact that many of the single mothers resented their presence.

Shatil activists explain that it has long been their goal to create ‘a coalition of the oppressed’ that will merge the interests of the development town poor – known for their traditionally nationalist beliefs and strong suspicion of Arab jingoist proclivities – with the Arab poor. This, they explain, will advance their twin goals: promoting a more extensive and ‘equitable’ welfare state and lowering resistance among the lower-paid strata to Arab nationalist aspirations. Eventually such a coalition could help transform Israel from a parochial Jewish state, which progressive souls deem undemocratic and racist, to a ‘state of all its citizens.’

It matters not to the Shatil activists that in pursuing their political agenda they are actually harming the single mothers. Anyone familiar with economics understands that raising government handouts, as they recommend, when the government is already sustaining a threatening deficit, is only going to inflame inflation and lower the purchasing power of those handouts.

If, instead, the social lobby took on Israeli monopolies and the banks that levy a hidden tax of 30%-50% percent on all consumer items (TV’s Channel 1 this week documented that prices of food staples in Israel are between four to eight times higher than in other countries) and forced them to bring prices down to competitive levels, they could increase the purchasing power of the lower strata by at least 30%, which would result in a huge improvement in their standard of living. This without increasing inflation, from which the poor suffer most.

That social lobby organizations have not a word to say about the outrageous exploitation of the poor by Israeli monopolies and by the rapacious banks shows that their real agenda is not helping the poor but exploiting them for political purposes.

THE NEW ISRAEL Fund is not alone in this, of course. As mentioned, the Histadrut has tried to foment trouble among the single mothers, as have Meretz and Shas. The Histadrut’s Danny Ben Shetreet had a group of agitators and strongmen planted among the women, ostensibly to protect them but actually to remove any dissenting voices.

These henchman, and former Panther Charlie Biton, were seen on TV harassing a group of single mothers who came to express their opposition to handouts and to encourage the protesting mothers to find work. Their signs were torn and they were pushed around and threatened until they had to leave.

Meretz’s Ran Cohen and Haim Oron were seen calling for the protesting women to resist the whole economic reform plan and topple the evil government that proposed it; they were followed by Shlomo Benizri and Eli Yishai of Shas, who had no qualms inciting against the cuts they had earlier voted for. They too urged the women to topple the government.

Even the Jewish Agency – that moribund body of bureaucrats drawing inflated salaries – jumped on the band wagon. It will establish a body to help the mothers ‘realize their rights’ for welfare. In this it continues its venerable tradition of perverting the Zionist dream of establishing a self-sustaining population capable of supporting itself, replacing it with degenerative dependency on welfare bureaucracies and political handouts.

Finally, a word about the media. There was almost no reporting of the real events taking place around the media-fomented Vikki Knafo cult. There was not a word about the mothers being exploited politically, to the detriment of their real needs. Instead the media became the cheerleader for the false claims of politically motivated social groups that manipulate and exploit the poor, and give not a damn about their real suffering.