How Israel Avoided Greece’s Fate

Nowadays, Israel is touted as an example of how a small nation can achieve great economic success, while Greece makes headlines as an example of economic disaster. But 30 years ago, writes David Shamah, Israel stood poised to go down Greece’s path:

Over the past decade . . . Israel has been a model of fiscal stability, as it has cut its public sector, reduced debt, and—most importantly—encouraged foreign investments. . . . [But in] 1985 inflation was running at over 500 percent a year and Israel was mired in debt. By cutting the public sector, devaluating the shekel, and opening up the economy to foreign investors, policymakers laid the foundation for Israel’s current prosperity. . . .

According to World Bank data, GDP per capita in 2004 was higher in Greece—$25,837—than it was in Israel, at $21,796. However, the Greek GDP per capita has not grown in the past decade, while Israel’s GDP per capita has risen by approximately 50 percent to $32,691 (in 2015 dollars). . . . Most importantly, in terms of international credit—the lifeline that sustains economies in the modern world—Israel is also doing far better than Greece. . . .

Why has Greece fallen on such hard times? All one need do . . . is to examine the economic policies of Athens. Strong unions forced the government to provide all manner of social benefits, such as a full retirement pension at age fifty-seven. . . . Unable, or unwilling, to cut the budget, the government has consistently borrowed to fund its obligations—and that avenue has now been closed off. Foreign investment has, as a result, fallen to near-zero levels, and Greece has been shut out of bond markets since 2010.

Read more at Times of Israel

More about: Economics, European Union, Greece, Israel & Zionism, Israeli economy

It’s Time for Haredi Jews to Become Part of Israel’s Story

Unless the Supreme Court grants an extension from a recent ruling, on Monday the Israeli government will be required to withhold state funds from all yeshivas whose students don’t enlist in the IDF. The issue of draft exemptions for Haredim was already becoming more contentious than ever last year; it grew even more urgent after the beginning of the war, as the army for the first time in decades found itself suffering from a manpower crunch. Yehoshua Pfeffer, a haredi rabbi and writer, argues that haredi opposition to army service has become entirely disconnected from its original rationale:

The old imperative of “those outside of full-time Torah study must go to the army” was all but forgotten. . . . The fact that we do not enlist, all of us, regardless of how deeply we might be immersed in the sea of Torah, brings the wrath of Israeli society upon us, gives a bad name to all of haredi society, and desecrates the Name of Heaven. It might still bring harsh decrees upon the yeshiva world. It is time for us to engage in damage limitation.

In Pfeffer’s analysis, today’s haredi leaders, by declaring that they will fight the draft tooth and nail, are violating the explicit teachings of the very rabbis who created and supported the exemptions. He finds the current attempts by haredi publications to justify the status quo not only unconvincing but insincere. At the heart of the matter, according to Pfeffer, is a lack of haredi identification with Israel as a whole, a lack of feeling that the Israeli story is also the haredi story:

Today, it is high time we changed our tune. The new response to the demand for enlistment needs to state, first and foremost to ourselves, that this is our story. On the one hand, it is crucial to maintain and even strengthen our isolation from secular values and culture. . . . On the other hand, this cultural isolationism must not create alienation from our shared story with our fellow brethren living in the Holy Land. Participation in the army is one crucial element of this belonging.

Read more at Tzarich Iyun

More about: Haredim, IDF, Israeli society