Jewish Poverty Consuming Over a MILLION in Israel

POVERTY REPORT FINDS 2.6 MILLION POOR PEOPLE IN ISRAEL*

(photo credit:MARC ISRAEL SELLEM/THE JERUSALEM POST)
















According to the report (Latet’s Alternative Poverty Report) released Monday under embargo until Tuesday morning, there are 1,626,000 adults (30.2% of the total) and 998,000 children (35.2% of the total), living under the poverty line. The report determined that :

• 90% of the poor suffer from a lack of food, while 55% lack food on a regular basis.
• one of every three children in Israel in 2015 is poor; 37% were forced to skip a meal or eat very little due to their family’s financial hardships, while 14% did not eat for an entire day because their parents were unable to provide food.
• 24% of children were sent to school without food, with 4% saying this was an ongoing occurrence
• 14% of children were forced to beg in the street, as well as sift through garbage cans for food
• 62% of impoverished parents were forced to do without medicine or medical treatment for their children at some point
• 96% of impoverished elderly, said old-age allotments are not enough to live in dignity and buy necessities
• 90% of the elderly cannot afford nursing care or help at home, while 52% are unable to afford medicine or medical treatments. In addition, 43% suffer from poor nutrition because they are unable to afford basic food
• 59% did not come from impoverished families, while 44% came from an “average” socioeconomic background and fell into poverty
• 54% of poor people had their water or electricity disconnected during the past year because they were unable to pay the bill and 41% said they are unable to pay their bills
• Seventy percent of the population believe the government is responsible for fighting poverty and reducing the poverty rate
• 83% of the public believe that the government’s current policies will not reduce the poverty rates and nearly half of the respondents said they lacked faith in public figures

Because of this report, published in the Jerusalem Post Tuesday paper edition, the Prime Minister was quoted about what he has done to improve the lives of the poor. You will have to read that online or in the paper edition, as I will not support it here. There was a drastic increase in these figures because of the Knesset actions of the 2014 Yesh Atid party led by Yair Lapid.

*While, the NII report calculates poverty based on a person’s income alone, the Latet report uses the degree of a person’s shortages in five categories – each reflecting essential needs to live with dignity – to determine poverty: housing, education, health, food security and the ability to meet the cost of living.

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A partial list of charities (I’m sure there are many more) where you can help alleviate the lack of food and necessities:

• Yad Eliezer Help Break the Cycle of Poverty in Israel Today
• Yad Ezra Hungry Babies in Israel Need You
• Leket Israel’s National Food Bank
• Ezer MiZion Israel’s largest Health Support Organization
• MEKIMI MeKimi is an Israeli n-p that helps families and individuals toward long-term financial stability (suffering from financial distress)
• ZAKA ZAKA First Responder Volunteers
• Wikipedia Wikipedia Listing of Charities based in Israel
• Ezra L’Marpeh provides assistance to the sick and needy;handles over 50,000 emergency medical referrals a year
  

About Charity: Jonathan Rosenblum, Ultra-Orthodox Bring Pride, Charity and Vitality Back to Jewish People (2013) The Forward: “there are 200 or so free loan societies listed in our neighborhood directory for everything from medicines to bridal gowns to infant pillows for the bris.” [...] "” Israel’s child support allowances, niggardly by European standards, and its highly regressive tax structure (18% VAT) make it impossible to feed large families...." (what an unlikely place to find such a nice article)




Postscript:
An irreligious government that has robbed Israelis of their Jewish Heritage, does not allow Israelis to make a decent wage to support their families, and takes away money from Holocaust Survivors, cannot seem to pass legislation in their Knesset to GREATLY alleviate the poverty rampant in Israel? What does this say about the Zionist vision of Israel being a haven for Jews? Hypocrisy? Greed? Selfishness? Egoism?