Poverty in Jaffa

August 30, 2006 - 10:38 PM by

One of the most pernicious stereotypes of Jews is that we are all rich.

Israeli blogger Yudit Ilany bursts that bubble, in response to a new report by Israel’s National Insurance Institute showing that 25 percent of Israelis overall, and 33 percent of children, fall into the category of “poor.”
poverty

The poor don’t need the report, they experience poverty daily. And they also know something else, it’s not going to end soon. Many were children of poor parents, and their children will probably be poor as well. “That’s how it goes”. Or is it? Why?

Israel has 4 (or was it three?) ministers without portfolio, but there is no Minister of Welfare, after all in that particular field all is “well”.

In Jaffa, poverty means no electiricty and water (or illegal connections, circumventing the meters, which is quite dangerous as it goes).
It means not having enough food (i’m not talking about quality, but about quantity).
It means not buying prescription medicine for your child as you cannot afford it, or it would imply not buying bread for all of the family. It means not having schoolbooks. It means not attending schooltrips, because your parents haven’t paid the bills for those for many years now, it means sharing one pair of shoes with another family member, never getting a real present when the holidays arrive, it means never having visited Tel Aviv although you live a 10-minute busride away in a suburb, Jaffa. It means having no glass in your windows, so it gets really cold, drafty and wet inside the house during winter. It means being kicked out of your council housing 3 days after you came home from a cancer operation, stitches still bleeding, sleeping outside, when you come back, sick, from chemotherapyIt means a 18 year old girl leaving school to provide for all her brothers and sisters, as the family has no other income from her underpaid job as a checkout girl, it means a 12 year old child going into prostitution and i can go on and on and on.

ALL details here are based on families i know myself, personally.

Yudit offers her own ideas of how to solve the problem, and people in Israel have much the same arguments over how to eradicate poverty that Americans do. What is obvious is that systemic change is badly needed. The question is, what sort of change? And whose responsibility is it to effect it?

empty fridge

Tags: • Category: Food, Life 

Comments

6 Comments on Poverty in Jaffa

  1. David on Thu, Aug 31st 2006 3:54 AM

    2. There is a solution. It however requires a fundamental change from the disasterous [and immoral] socialist policies.

    It is government intervention, through regulation and bureacracy that inhibits economic expansion.

    This is a worldwide phenomenon, but for Israel, it means constantly holding up a begging bowl to the United States, unemployment and taxation.

    Israel has the capability if not the government desire to become independent fiscally.

    The laws of economics are as immutable as the laws of physics, for the same philosphical reasons. If disobeyed, pain results.

    It is high time that the closest Israel has to a capitalist politician, Bibi Netanyahu is elected Prime Minister.

    In a true capitalist society [it has never existed] economic abundance and human generosity due to sublime human nature, would ensure very few mothers and fathers not being able to access medicine for their children or themselves.

    Why? Because individual freedom allows a person to flourish and attain their best.

    Economically successful nations are not accidental in the samw way that unsuccessful nations are not accidental. Despite the evil of statitism in the form of socialism, Israel is great nation.

    Just imagine how much greater it could be. There is only one way politically and that is the socio-economic system of laissez-faire capitalism.

  2. yudit ilany on Thu, Aug 31st 2006 3:51 PM

    3. Israel’s poor never have had it worse than under Bibi… or as a result of bibi’s social insurance cuts.
    People can do “their very best”, when they haveequal access to such basics as good schools, job opportunnies etc.
    In reality, when you live in Jaffa (just an example, i could also state Rahat or Shderot or Netivot) chances are great you attend a lousy school. Jaffa has a 53% school dropout rate (the municipality claims it is “only” 49%). When you drop out of school, you usually cannot but find very simple jobs for lousy pay and under bad cnditions. Many of Jaffa’s poor are employed. In fact they work very hard, many of them for much less than the minimum wage, with no social security so to speak off.
    Their children go to the same horrid schools they went to, and many will drop out of them.
    Extreme capitalist societies appear to do very well for their wealthy and powerfull. when the only interest is making more money, you’ll have free trade zones where the poor work for minimal wages under awful conditions.
    Extreme capitalist societies produce where it is cheapest, that is, where the wages (productions costs) are lowest. that might be very nice for the wealthy.
    I doubt if it is just and fair.
    But then, capitalism has never been about social justice nor about fairness.

    Israel is a VERY capitalist country, in which, so the national security report teaches us, the rich get wealthier each time, and the poor poorer. moreover, there are also more poor and more of the poor are working poor. They simply do not earn enough to break the poverty cycle

  3. yudit ilany on Thu, Aug 31st 2006 4:16 PM

    4. And, something small: quite true there are many poor Jews in Israel , also in Jaffa.
    But actually, most of the cases i mentioned in my blog are Arab families living in Jaffa.
    The Israel Buro of Statistics has often pointed out that the poorest populations in Israel are the Arabs (espcially the Bedouin) and the ultra religious Jews.

  4. eah on Wed, Apr 9th 2008 7:32 PM

    5. I Like Jaffa!

  5. Charity in Israel » Blog Archive » All Jews Are Rich! Not at all so!!! on Tue, May 5th 2009 11:08 AM

    6. [...] A great article from the Israelity Blog: [...]

  6. Poblo on Thu, Mar 10th 2011 9:13 PM

    7. Um what up with the lady?

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