Petition: Cut Independence Day celebration spending

Reaches 11,000 signatories in 70 days; "is it an attempt to hide money from those who need it?"

By SHELLY PAZ
60th Anniversary 224 (photo credit: Government Press Office)
60th Anniversary 224
(photo credit: Government Press Office)
An on-line petition calling to cut the budget for Israel's 60th Independence Day has garnered some 11,000 signatures in 20 days. The petition asks Minister-without-Portfolio Ruhama Avraham, in charge of planning the celebrations on May 7 and 8, not to spend all the budgeted funds on "useless events." "Yes, we deserve to celebrate 60 years after, but why with such ostentatiousness? Is it an attempt to hide the poverty and all the people who could use this money?" asks the document. "We call on the organizers of the events and the special celebrations to channel the money to more important, just and moral causes... Spreading the money between social, welfare, health and cultural projects that will be screened by a public committee would be a better way to celebrate Israel's 60th anniversary," the petition continues. Israel's failures in recent years - political and social - were not easy to acknowledge, according to the petition. "Lets try and change this sad picture, starting with this small but principled struggle." The document was published on the Atzuma Web site, which allows surfers to post petitions on the Internet. The initiators promise to bring the petition to Avraham and Prime Minister Ehud by the end of this month. The headquarters of the 60th anniversary celebrations declined to comment.