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The Kikar Hamedina, in central Tel Aviv has never received as many people as on the day of September 3rd 2011. The square designed by Oscar Niemeyer in the 60s was the apotheosis of the 300,000 people who, on that date, conducted a protest march against the value of the rent, the cutting of public services funding and low salaries.
Most participants, according to local observers, were Jewish workers. But they were not the only ones. “Jews and Israeli Arabs were together in this social battle”, says Professor Efraim Davidi, from the University of Tel Aviv, a communist leader and a former member of the executive committee of the Histadrut, the main trade union confederation. “It was an important step towards the consciousness, among both nationalities, that the main conflict is against the Zionist oligarchy, not between groups of people.”
Lior Shapira
On September 3 of 2011, thousands of Israelis, mostly youth, took to the streets to protest against the government
The reasons for such an enormous mobilization – equivalent to joining together three million people from São Paulo in the Anhangabaú Valley – may perhaps be found in the social numbers of the flaming Israeli economy. Although some indicators are positive – infant mortality between 2000 and 2012, for example, dropped from 7.9 to 4.07 deaths per thousand born, one of the lowest in the world – data indicates a concentration of income and increased poverty.
Even with unemployment rates falling from 10.7% to 6.3% since 2003, the number of people living below the poverty line ($ 690 for individual monthly income or $ 1,100 for a couple) rose from 18% to 23.6 %. The numbers are trustworthy, included in the annual report of the CIA, United States’ investigation agency.
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Another investigation, this one from the Israeli department of tax revenues itself, explains this situation. More than 65% of people are earning less than the local average wage of $ 2,500 monthly. Half of the workers do not reach $1,700. A fourth part of them makes less than the minimum wage, bringing home no more than $1,200 each month.
ADVA, a non-governmental organization, surveyed the other side of the coin. The presidents of the hundred leading private companies in the country receive around $ 154,300 for thirty days wearing working ties, more than 62 times the average salary in Israel. This disparity places country in the fifth position between most unequal among the 35 that are part of the OECD (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development), an organization that brings together the nations that have the highest GDP per capita on the planet.
Mikhail Frunze/Opera Mundi
Efraim Davidi, Profefsor from the Tel Aviv University: “main conflict is against the Zionist oligarchy, not between groups of people”
Since the 80s, the income gap has risen 4.3%, the average of the OECD members, among the 10% richest and the 10% poorest. But this gap went up to 13.8% in Israel. The curve calculated by the Gini index is also not encouraging: the Israeli level of inequality has risen from 35.5 to 39.2 between 2001 and 2008, placing the country in the worst 65th position, with more disparity that Yemen and Egypt.
What also impresses is the combination of these statistics with the 16th place that Israel occupies in the ranking of human development drawn up by the United Nations. As this assessment considers only hope of life, birth, education, literacy and GDP, it can be concluded that Israel acts like scissors: while their wealth rises rapidly, the labor income falls.
Inequality
But the fall is not even the same for everyone. Ashkenazi Jews receive salaries 33% above average. The Sephardim, only 7%. Women are 25% below the average. Israeli Arabs, 33%. The intermediate group on the social scale, which receives between 1.9 and $ 3,200, in current values, represented 33% in the 80’s. But they had dropped, in 2011, to 27.5% of the population.
“The economic policy of the last thirty years has transferred income from workers to corporations,” says Davidi. “The flattening of wages and cuts in social budgets were a natural consequence of the stabilization program adopted in 1985. Privatization, associated with grants for the military-industrial complex, and the financing of colonization in the occupied territories and the subsidies to large companies created a factory of inequality. “
Mikhail Frunze/Opera Mundi
In Tel Aviv (photo) and Jerusalem, buildings or rents are intended, in large part, to the high-income citizens
The emergence of an elite group of highly paid executives and professionals, added to foreigners who want to learn and invest in the El Dorado of technology, had also effects on the housing market. In Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, the largest cities, buildings or rental units are targeted, largely to citizens with high incomes. No wonder they were the trigger of the 2011 demonstrations.
“We know that there is discomfort in part of the population and we are committed to finding answers to the claims,” says Eldad Shidlovsky, the Ministry of Finance. “The government set up a commission to study the problems and propose alternatives, some are already being implemented. People receive information about the sudden enrichment in high tech industry and want the same for themselves. It is not simple to deal with those expectations. “
Translation: Kelly Cristina Spinelli