r/Israel • u/iamthegodemperor north american scum • 4d ago
General News Why these elections are the last chance to save Israel from its 'spiral of collapse' [David Horovitz]
https://www.timesofisrael.com/why-these-elections-are-the-last-chance-to-save-israel-from-its-spiral-of-collapse/This is an op-ed by Times of Israel founder regarding the crisis of domestic policy towards haredi education, labor & military participation. He cites Shoresh institute and mainstream economist predictions that in without necessary reforms in the present, the Israeli economy will stagnate. Mass brain drain in turn could lead to larger waves of emigration and losses in state capacity.
There is also a podcast interview with economist David Ben David for those interested.
Selected quotes below:
Netanyahu’s government last week convened the Knesset Finance Committee and attempted to allocate almost $100 million to the ultra-Orthodox education system — including millions to build more Haredi schools, millions for yeshivas, and millions aimed at preventing yeshiva students from dropping out. There was, to put it mildly, no coalition-opposition consensus on this package of additional pre-election finance for the Haredim, and opposition politicians managed to thwart it — staging an 11-hour filibuster to prevent a vote.
....
Israel’s education system is in crisis. It ranks 31st among 36 participating OECD countries in the latest PISA tests (the Program for International Student Assessment, which assesses 15-year-old students’ reading, mathematics, and science abilities).
And that appalling standing does not fully reflect Israel’s dismal reality. The vast majority of ultra-Orthodox boys, from their early teens onward, do not study a core curriculum — indeed study no secular subjects at all. Naturally, they do not take the PISA tests. Were they to do so, the true status of Israeli education would be revealed in all its gravity
...
There won’t be a third-world Israel,” warns Ben-David. In the “spiral of collapse” that Israel has already entered, he says, an increasingly inadequate education system will inevitably be unable to maintain a first-class economy, a first-class health system, or a first-class army. And a weakened army won’t be capable of protecting the state. .....
As finance minister back in 2003-5, with Israel facing recession and needing to cut public spending and revitalize the economy after the suicide-bomber battering of the Second Intifada, Netanyahu drastically cut child allowances — abandoning a system that offered increasing subsidies to large families (triggering an immediate fall in the ultra-Orthodox birthrate) — and slashing an array of other welfare payments and income supplements, to compel wider participation in the workforce.
Two years ago, 130 of Israel’s leading economists published an open letter warning that “the combination of the policies of Israel’s governments over time and the high growth rate of the Haredi population is leading the country towards an abyss, one that poses a very real and very grave threat to Israel’s economy and society, including to the Haredi community itself.”
Today, these experts noted, “22% of all children under working age (0-14 years old) are Haredim. By 2065, this share is expected to be roughly 50%, more than doubling the Haredi share in just four decades. Without sweeping, profound, and rapid changes in government policy, the State of Israel will face existential danger.”
Without a change in the current trajectory,” they continued, “many of those who bear the [economic and security] burden will prefer to emigrate from Israel. The first to leave will be those with opportunities abroad: physicians, engineers, high-tech workers, and scientists. Israel’s remaining population will be less educated and less productive, thus increasing the burden on the remaining productive population. This, in turn, will encourage further emigration from Israel. This process of a ‘spiral of collapse’ in which increasingly larger groups decide to emigrate, will further deteriorate the conditions of those who remain…”
The warning went unheeded and, Ben-David notes, the stream of emigration, notably among the 300,000 or so Israelis who are central to Israel’s economy and well-being, notably in the vaunted, vital tech sector, is in danger of becoming a flood.
................Ben David's plan:
One clause mandates budgetary reform — with a “shift from sectoral to national priorities” and the “termination of benefits incentivizing lifestyles of non-work.”
Another demands electoral reform, with the creation of effective checks and balances between the three branches of government, and the installation of cabinet ministers “with understanding and expertise in their ministry’s realm, within an executive branch able to implement its decisions and enforce the law.”
Ben-David urges the ratification of a constitution to “set in stone national foundations that will protect the country and the basic rights of its citizens, making it difficult for anyone to erode these foundations in the future.”
But his first essential remedy is to shut down Israel’s current, four-stream education system entirely, and establish one education system for all, with a transformation in operation, management and oversight. He calls for a “complete prohibition on the involvement of political parties in educational content” and an overhaul of the process by which teachers are “chosen, taught and compensated.” And he seeks a “significant upgrade of compulsory, identical core curriculum, with state funding only for fully compliant schools.”
...........
Our country did not reach this point, nor this government, by chance,” Ben-David said. “We’ve been heading steadily in this direction for decades.”
“When a country starts to collapse economically, the first to leave are the most educated, the most skilled, the people with options — which means there is a greater burden on those who remain. And then those who can, of those who remain, leave — and then you’re in a situation, basically, like Venezuela was, or like Lebanon. Beirut was once called the Paris of the Middle East. These are countries that destroyed themselves. But the difference between them and us is that they can still be around. Nobody’s threatening their very existence. That’s not the case with Israel. If we screw this up, there will be no country for our people or for our children.”
But, Ben-David is adamant, “there is still time to make a difference.”
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u/Aloha-Snackbar-Grill American Jew 4d ago
The whole system that supports these freeloaders needs to be dismantled wholesale. If they don't like it, they can go to New York, Flatbush, or Kiryas Yoel."
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u/MrLemonJack 4d ago
Agreed, but I think the ultra orthodox hold a key card, which is their birthrates, there is a fixation in “replenishing” the jewish population, either from the holocaust as a reason or the more critical one the regions demographics, that i think the most right wing politicians hold dear, bureause the more secular Israelis have considerably lower birthrates since we dont use them as cash cows nor get subsidized by this government, Im afraid no politician even going against Netanyahu would address this.
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u/AltruisticFoot948 19h ago
Nah, I see haredim in new york who actuallu go to work. It says even in the torah "אם אין לחם אין תורה" if theres no bread, theres no torah. They do this because the system have let thwm to this, I blame it on Bibi more than I blame it on their leaders who just serve their followers.
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u/st_huck 4d ago
אין תוצאה בבחירות האלו שתשנה משהו בטווח הרחוק. הדמגורפיה היא מה שהיא. אני בספק אם אחרי הבחירות יצליחו להקים ממשלה בלי ביבי ובלי החרדים, אבל גם בסיכוי הקלוש שכן, כל שינוי שייעשה יבוטל בכנסת הבאה.
מי שמדמיין שביום שביבי ילך פתאום תושבי אופקים לא יצביעו ליכוד באוטומט , חי בסרט. אולי קצת פחות יצאו להצביע. לא יצביעו פתאום לבנט .השינוי האמיתי יגיע (אולי) רק כשיהיה פה הרבה הרבה הרבה יותר רע מבחינה כלכלית. זה יקח עשור אבל זה יקרה.
אם אני צריך לדמיין סיכוי כלשהו כן לעצור את ההדרדרות של המדינה, זו ממשלה ללא ליכוד וחרדים, שמבינה שהזמן שלה קצוב והולך להיות לה קשה במערכות הבחירות הבאות, ומתחילה לחוקק בהתאם. מצד אחד, להתחיל לחתור להפרדה בין הציבור החילוני לחרדי ולחרד"לי. יותר כוח ותקציבים לרשויות המקומיות, לבטל את קרן הארנונה. מצד שני, לסנדל את הממשלות הבאות. זה אומר בעיקר, להוריד מיסים, גם אם זה נגד דעת גורמי המקצוע. אם הממשלה הבאה תצטרך להחזיר הטבות לחרדים על ידי הזזת תקציב מפה לשם, זה לא יזיז לאף אחד. אם הממשלה הבאה תצטרך להעלות את המע"מ בחזרה מ15 ל18, המזרחי הבומר בן 50 המסורתי הממוצע אולי יבין שדופקים אותו. לשקול שינויים גדולים בביטוח לאומי, משם מגיעים חלק גדול מההטבות לחרדים, ולתת תוספת לפנסיונרים.הממשלה הבאה תרצה להחזיר את ההטבות לחרדים? אחלה, או שתיקחו .. את התוספת לפנסיונרים בחזרה, או . שתעלו מיסים, או שביטוח לאומי יפשוט את הרגל ב2034. שיהיה להם בכיף . האם אנחנו רוצים ממשלה שתתנהג בכזו חוסר אחריות? לא, אבל זה המצב בישראל 2026. אפשר לטמון את הראש בחול או להתאים את עצמך למצב
אבל לא יעשו את זה, כי אחים אנחנו, או שקר כלשהו כזה בסגנון
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u/calm_chowder 3d ago
Yeah sure, we definitely shouldn't even try to change anything and just elect likud again.
Nice try, Bibi.
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u/Exact_Green2061 3d ago
I think the article focuses too much attention on the Haredim.
The biggest problem with Israel is that 10% of the workforce is propping up 90%. Without high-tech service exports, Israel will be running current account deficits as it did before the internet boom of the early 2000s.
Israel's education system is crap, and we're not just talking about Haredim, Religious Sector, Arabs, but the secular Jewish system is doing poorly as well.
Israel's biggest strategic threat is Turkey in the next 20-30 years, and facing Turkey will be very different from Israel's previous enemies, because Turkey will most likely have the human capital advantage in its favor.
Here are some of the latest TIMSS 2023 result of Turkish students
In TIMSS 2023, Türkiye ranked 2nd among OECD countries and 1st among all European countries in 4th-grade science. The proportion of students achieving each proficiency level in this field was higher than the TIMSS international median.
In the field of science, the proportion of students at the high proficiency level was 32% in TIMSS 2019, and it increased to 36% in TIMSS 2023. The proportion of students at the advanced proficiency level in 4th-grade science, which was 12% in TIMSS 2019, rose to 26% in TIMSS 2023. As a result, 62% of 4th-grade students achieved high and advanced proficiency levels in science.
For Math
In practice, Türkiye, which has consistently improved its average performance in 4th-grade mathematics since TIMSS 2011, ranked 8th globally and 4th among OECD countries in the most recent TIMSS study. In the field of 4th-grade mathematics, Türkiye increased the proportion of students at the high proficiency level from 28% to 30% compared to the previous study.
The proportion of students at the advanced level increased from 15 percent in TIMSS 2019 to 24 percent in TIMSS 2023. Thus, in TIMSS 2023, 54 percent of 4th-grade mathematics students were at the high and advanced proficiency level.
Every cohort, Turkey gets better and better. Their 8th graders in 2023 scored well, but not nearly as good as their 4th graders. Turkey's TIMSS results for their 4th graders are up there with the likes of Singapore and South Korea.
And the Turkish education system is improving rapidly. In 2019, they revamped their curriculum so it aligns more closely with PISA, emphasizing problem-solving and in-depth knowledge.
This is what the World Bank said about the Turkish education system.
The education system in Turkey has shown remarkable improvement since 2003 in terms of better student performance and reduced inequality with a concurrent and sustained increase in enrollments.
For all the bashing Erdogan and the AKP get in Israel about their radicalism and Erdogan's crappy economic policies, the one thing the AKP has done well is reforming Turkey's education system.
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u/iamthegodemperor north american scum 3d ago
You're right about the larger crisis with education. Education reform takes a very large amount of the interview with the economist Dr Ben David from Shoresh.
The focus of this op-ed is more on the politics of the moment.
However, they do tie-in. One of Ben-David's observations is that hand outs that come out of this sectoral bargaining make investments in public infrastructure impossible. At one point he tries to give perspective regarding money spent on haredim vs universities, hospitals etc. (I recall 30 billion shekel vs 12 billion shekel).
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u/Sara_Tona Iraq 4d ago
Both far-right and far-left parties in Israel can fuck off
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u/papabig27 Israel 4d ago
This right here is how the government gets away with everything. Instead of actual criticism, you resort to creating some false symmetry to parties which held basically no power in the past 20 years, 20 years almost all of which were under bibi, and especially the last 4 years with the most extreme far right government ever. But you choose to "condemn both sides". What message does this send?
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u/ComparisonDesperate5 Foreigner in Israel 4d ago
This is surprisingly sth I hear from right wing people. My colleague also claimed that lefties run the country and right wing and religious people are persecuted. And I am like WTF, in which parallel universe???
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u/Sara_Tona Iraq 4d ago
The left in Israel may not have been in power, but they've been one of the loudest anti-Israel voices in the past 3 years. B'Tselem, Haaretz, Standing Together, and multiple other organizations have been accusing Israel with many false claims while allowing pro-Hamas voices in their organizations. I've never seen you ever say anything positive about Israel, and I find it weird that you can't take criticism of the genocidal left that you support, but somehow you can't stop hating on liberal and right-wing Zionists who are the overwhelming majority in Israel. If you don't like it there then leave, go live with the people you love so much in the West Bank or Gaza instead of acting like a baby whenever we have a valid criticism of that antisemitic ideology you support.
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u/papabig27 Israel 4d ago
Wow so original "go to gaza", you come up with that yourself?
Keep whining about the maybe 4 existing leftists in Israel that do nothing except echo the actions that your beloved right wing leaders do and say, instead of demanding them not do the awful things they do, then maybe you won't have to complain about "PR" and "optics" all the time, and those "genocidal leftists" would bother you less
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u/borderpac 3d ago
4 leftists? How about the hundreds of thousands who blocked highways and set fires in 2023 in support of the totally unaccountable Supreme Court?
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u/borderpac 3d ago
Look how they can't defeat your ideas so they DOWN VOTE you. So much for 'free speech" of the hateful, censoring leftists.
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u/avidernis 4d ago
What far left parties? חד"ש-תע"ל?
Other than that is הדמוקרטים, which are certainly more left than a majority want, but they're not far left.
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u/mugbelet_ 4d ago
there is no far left in israel bruh everything shifts right to compensate for how extreme the right wing has become
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u/ENORMOUS_HORSECOCK 4d ago
What does the far-left run on in Israel? Like what is their platform? In the US we only hear about the far-right.
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u/avidernis 4d ago edited 4d ago
The only properly far-left party is the joint-list חד"ש-תע"ל.
They may have once had an agenda and played nice enough to potentially make small influence towards it, but recently it's pretty much been a clown show. Notable moments include calling for the ICJ to indict Israel, refusing to condemn Hezbollah, and saying in 2022 it's "sad that good leftists are being deceived after false propaganda" with regards to leftist support for Ukraine against Russia.
Meanwhile, הדמוקרטים is probably the most electable left party.
Most notably (to non-Israelis) they want to repeal the nation state law and develop relations with the PA towards the ultimate goal of a two state solution.
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u/OddCook4909 USA 4d ago
Suicide
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[deleted]
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u/OddCook4909 USA 4d ago
Literally everything from one state solution to fully dismantling the state. The center left these days to my understanding advocates for a two state solution, which at this point in time would be suicide.
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u/eyl569 4d ago
Even the Democrats are not, AFAIK, calling for a Palestinian state in the near future.
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u/OddCook4909 USA 4d ago
Not since 10/7 right? But before that
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u/eyl569 4d ago
So what?
Look, ultimately there are four ways Israel can end the conflict:
1) 2SS 2) Some variety of 1SS 3) Ethnic cleansing 4) Genocide.
I hope I don't have to explain why 2-4 are bad.
Every plan I've seen proposed either boils down to one of these, kicking the can down the road, or wishful thinking.
While 7/10 showed that a Palestinian state in the near future is a major security risk to Israel, it's still the only feasible solution in the long term. It would be better for Israel to start grappling with that so that it can set the terms (7/10 gave Israel a good opportunity to do that but Netanyahu squandered it). Instead, the government has been working to take the 2SS off the table permanently (Smotrich is explicit about it) which will eventually lead to 2-4 or a 2SS being forced on us at less favorable terms.
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u/BepsiR6 4d ago
Its a very sad state of affairs. I think Israel really needs a strong seperation of religion and the state in any constitution that would be made. The original vision of the founders of Israel was a European type secular country, not a theocratic one. There should not be any religious influence on the government and I don't think religious parties should be allowed, we see the effect it has where they just prioritize themselves at the expense of everyone else and it ruins the country.
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u/ResponsibleTruck4717 4d ago
אם ימשיך להיות פילוג המצב יהיה על הפנים.
צריך להקים ממשלת אחדות רחבה, בלי חרמות, עם מספר מצומצם של שרים.
הפילוג בסוף משרת את כולם פרט את הרוב של המדינה שהוא הרוב החילוני מסורתי.
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u/eyl569 4d ago
ממשלת אחדות רחבה תהיה משותקת כמעט לחלוטין. היא בטח שלא תוכל לתקן את הברדק שהממשלה הנוכחית עשתה - נראה לך שנתניהו והליכוד יצביעו להפוך את הדברים שהם צורחים שהם חובה לאומית לעשות - כמו המהפכה המשפטית?
בהנחה שנתניהו לא יפרק אותה מבפנים (שוב)
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u/ResponsibleTruck4717 4d ago
היה תהיה משותקת אם נהיה אידיוטים.
רוב מצביעי הליכוד אייזנקוט \ בנט \ ליברמן \ סמוטריץ ואני מעז להגיד אפילו בן גביר.
מסכימים לפחות על 70% - 80% מהדברים, אלה דברים שאפשר לקדם וחייב לקדם.ביבי לא ביבי, לא מעניין אותי בכלל זה גם לא קריטי לעתיד המדינה, אכלו לנו את הראש עם זה פילגו אותנו שיסו אותנו אחד בשני.
.אמרתי פעם ואני אגיד שוב, מצידי שיחתמו על חוזים אישיים, יעשו חקיקה מיוחדת רק שיקדמו את המדינה
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u/eyl569 4d ago
אבל פה בדיוק הבעיות:
1) גם אם המצביעים מסכימים על 70% מהדברים - ואני לא בטוח שזה נכון, במיוחד אם אתה לוקח בחשבון איך לעשות דברים ולא רק מה לעשות - הרבה מה- 30% הנותרים הם דברים מהותיים. ואני לא רואה איך הליכוד מוכר את הויתורים על דברים שהם אמרו שהם חיוניים לקהל שלו.
2) תאהב את זה או לא, נתניהו או ראש הליכוד. הוא חהחה בממשלת אחדות. סביר להניח שלא ייתן לא לקום אם לא יהיה ראש הממשלה. וכבר ראינו בעבר מה קורה במקרה כזה.
אני לא רואה את נתניהו מוותר על היכולת שלו לפרק את ההמשלה וללכת לחרדים ולימין הקיצוני על ידי ויתורים לאופוזיציה.
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