http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2015-03-02/israelis-worry-about-inequality-not-iran
With Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu scheduled to address Congress on Tuesday, his speech is seemingly the only Israel-related subject receiving attention in the American press. Today’s New York Times had two prominent stories about Israel: one about the dilemmas Netanyahu's speech is creating for Jewish Democrats in Congress and a second that said the speech is a highly divisive topic in Israel.
That latter claim is true, but it mischaracterizes the nature of Israel’s national conversation. With the speech just a day away, it's not surprising that much of the Israeli press is giving it play. But most of the vitriol leading up to Israel’s March 17 elections has been about Netanyahu’s handling (or mishandling) of the economy and the growing gap between the wealthy and the poor in Israel, and not on the congressional
Haaretz, Israel’s left-leaning newspaper of record, gave the speech top billing Monday morning, but, in its Hebrew version, it peppered its website with many more stories about economics. The paper reported that at Sheba Medical Center, one of Israel’s leading medical establishments, overcrowding is so great that the hospital has asked ambulances to bring no more patients.
Haaretz attached a photograph of a patient being treated in the hallway. Haaretz also reported on a small revival of the tent city that had sprouted in Tel Aviv two summers ago to protest the high cost of housing. The paper covered a court ruling that said teachers cannot stage a semi-strike over changes in their working conditions, and discussed what has emerged as the top symbolic issue of rich versus poor in the Israeli press: the investigation of alleged financial mismanagement and excessive expenditures in the prime minister’s residences.
right wing politics are a biatch everywhere, healthcare, poor, housing, work conditions, concessions to the rich, banks and leader abusing his power, that sounds exactly like America no wonder the republicans were back slapping, clapping and thumbs up high fiving the right wing Israeli leader they are bonded together in idiotology. i'm rooting for the Israeli liberals more peace less war.
