June 6, 2003

Furor Over Sharon’s 'Poverty’ Statement

Jerusalem - During a recent visit to London, Esther Minsky, an employee at the Beit Frankforter Center for the Aged here, did some modest fund raising for the center’s newest initiative, a program in which the center’s elderly members prepare approximately 100 sandwiches every day for hungry schoolchildren.

Minsky posted a flyer at her sister’s kosher bakery asking for donations. The flyer, which was headed "A Sandwich a Day for Every Child: Sponsor a Child for 7 Pounds a Month," explained that many Jerusalem parents "do not have the money to prepare a snack for their child."

The British native also addressed some children at her nephew’s Jewish day school.

"I handed out the flyers and asked them if they’d ever come to school hungry, without breakfast and without a snack," Minsky said. "I told them how hard it is to concentrate on schoolwork when you have a rumbly tummy."

While many Jews in London and elsewhere in the diaspora have been deeply touched by recent fund-raising drives aimed at easing poverty in Israel, the Israeli government is infuriated by charitable campaigns that portray Israel as an impoverished country.

In an unprecedented move, the government this week issued a statement condemning the activities of voluntary nonprofit organizations that use "images of poverty and hunger" while fund raising for Israel.

The sternly worded cabinet communique, which was delivered by Prime Minister Sharon himself, asserted that such a portrayal "harms Israel’s national strength and damages the country in the perception of Jews overseas."

In a softer tone, the statement expressed the government’s "deep appreciation" for diaspora efforts on Israel’s behalf.

Since the start of the intifada in September 2000, for example, diaspora communities have raised tens of millions of dollars in emergency campaigns. These efforts, which have been conducted in close consultation with the government, portray Israel as a nation besieged by hostile enemies.

In recent months, however, several local and diaspora organizations have spearheaded drives focusing on the poor state of Israel’s economy and the toll it is taking on ordinary citizens.

According to observers, today’s poverty-centered campaigns hearken back to the early days of the state, when Jews around the world were encouraged to send packages of food and clothing to their less fortunate Israeli cousins.

The cabinet’s strong words have sparked a heated debate over fund-raising tactics, Israel’s image and how much control the government should have over them.

Jewish Agency chairman Sallai Meridor, who reportedly tipped off Sharon to the "hunger campaigns" being conducted overseas, told The Jewish Week that he is "against portraying Israel as a starving country. It causes strategic harm to the country.

"The partnership between the Jewish people and Israel has to be built on education, human capital, not in feeding hungry people," he said.

The portrayal of Israel as an economic backwater "will discourage investors and immigrants. It sets back Israel’s image 100 years," Meridor said.

Those in the voluntary sector, as well as government employees who work with citizens in need, are clearly upset by such statements.

"They make me really angry," Sima Zini, director of Beit Frankforter, said of the cabinet statement and Meridor’s remarks. "Sharon sits up on high and obviously doesn’t know what’s going on below him. The fact is, in every neighborhood there are children who are going to school hungry."

To fill the void, several of Beit Frankforter’s 600 elderly members gather every morning in the center’s kitchen and prepare dozens of sandwiches that are then delivered to the schools. Funding for this and the center’s other projects come from Israeli and diaspora donors.

In addition, local restaurants and even the falafel stand down the street quietly donate dozens of free sandwiches to the effort each month. Some of the project’s food comes from the donation baskets that stand outside most Israeli supermarkets.

Zini’s own organization, which is housed in an immaculate, stately old house that was once in shambles, provides a lifeline to the community’s elderly, many of whom, she says, are themselves struggling to survive financially.

"Many of our members can’t afford to pay for the medications they need or a new pair of shoes," Zini said. "They can’t afford the center’s 20 shekel [less than $5] monthly membership fee. Of course we don’t close our doors to them."

The notion that the government would want to downplay the country’s economic woes makes Zini shake her head in wonder.

"I suppose the image of hungry people is embarrassing," she said. "The government is behaving like a mother whose child tells a neighbor that he’s hungry. The game is, don’t air your dirty laundry in public. For those of us who deal with the problems day in and day out, it’s exasperating."

"Don’t tell me there’s no widespread hunger in Israel," said Avi Saadi, the owner of a small but popular Jerusalem restaurant called Bagel Bite, just down the street from Beit Frankforter.

Without fanfare, Saadi donates 1,000 bagels a month to disadvantaged people, Jews and Arabs, in a variety of frameworks, as well as 20 sandwiches every week to Beit Frankforter’s school program.

When asked how a restaurant with perhaps a dozen tables is able to give so much to charity, the affable 46-year-old blushes.

"It’s nothing," Saadi says with a wave of his left arm. "I only wish I could give more but the economy this past year hasn’t been so kind to us."

Brian Auslander, a senior social worker in the Jerusalem municipality, readily acknowledges that the city’s social services office "relies heavily on voluntary organizations" that provide everything from hot meals and weekly groceries to free or almost free clothing and baby strollers.

"I don’t know what we’d do if these organizations and the people who contribute to them didn’t exist," he said frankly. "About 25 percent of the city’s residents receive some sort of assistance from us, and it’s still not enough. Really, it’s a problem the [national] government needs to solve rather than the city."

Auslander said that in 2002 the Jerusalem municipality tried to estimate the percentage of residents who live below the poverty line. Surprisingly, Bituach Leumi, the office that provides poverty statistics, publishes no information on the Arab sector.

The city survey revealed that more than 40 percent of Jewish and Arab Jerusalemites live below the poverty line - an alarming number.

Though true cases of ongoing hunger are rare in Israel thanks to the array of local, state and voluntary services, "poverty isn’t only hunger," Auslander stressed. "It’s the inability to afford decent housing, to pay for clothing and schoolbooks and school trips. It’s the inability to pay for a tutor when your child is having severe problems in school. It’s getting deeper and deeper into a hole and not being able to get out of it."

Conditions are expected to get even worse once various provisions in the just-approved tax law go into effect in the coming months.

Although the Knesset has opted against linking child allowances to army service, for example, due to the lobbying efforts of immigrants, Arabs, the disabled and others who did not qualify for military service, other cuts loom large.

Child allowances for the third child onward will be reduced, as will stipends to the disabled, recently demobilized soldiers, the elderly and just about every other segment of the population. Value Added Tax has already jumped from 17 to 18 percent and unemployment is hovering around 11 percent.

To bridge the gap, many synagogues and private individuals with means have "adopted" poor families in the community.

"Our shul provides several families with a few hundred shekels a month," said Nicky Crouger, a Jerusalem social worker. In most cases, she said, individuals and institutions approach the department of social services, which in turn refers needy clients, with their permission.

"There is poverty in Israel," confirms Arnie Draiman, Israeli representative for the Ziv Tzedakah Fund, a body that funds some 150 voluntary organizations. "But Israel is probably better set up than most countries to deal with people in need. There’s a tremendous tradition of giving."

As someone who helps funnel money to worthy causes, Draiman is in frequent contact with the wealthiest and poorest people in society.

"I don’t disagree with Sharon’s view that Israel is a rich country with a lot of resources, but that doesn’t mean that there aren’t people in real need," he said. "Sharon’s speaking from a political vantage point. He doesn’t want Israel to be seen as a weak country, a country that can’t even feed its own people."

Charley Levine, CEO of Ruder Finn Israel, a large public relations company in Jerusalem, prefers to promote Israel through the model of a glass half full rather than half empty.

"The economy and the society of Israel today are miles ahead of where we were 10 or even five years ago," he said. "Certainly there has been a serious downturn in high tech and tourism, and the level of unemployment is horrible, but I think as the West, as Wall Street and the rest of the industrialized world begin to rebound, then Israel will rebound, too."

"Look at the Tel Aviv stock market," Levine said by way of illustration. "It’s risen 25 percent in the last couple of months. It’s a good indication that people have faith in the economy."

While not intending to downplay the real problems facing Israel, Levine is adamant that "you have to see things in context. If you stand up on a podium in New York and say, 'If you don’t write a check people will starve in Israel next week,’ that’s an incorrect picture.

"What I think the prime minister was saying was, 'Keep things in context.’ "

© 2000 - 2003 The Jewish Week, Inc.