Striking doctors, attorneys and trade unionists begs the question: Did these people really not know what they were getting themselves into when they took those jobs? For Israel to stay float, the protests must be stopped and the hard work must begin.
By RAPHAEL ISRAELIHousing protest in Tel Aviv 311(photo credit: Channel 10)For weeks now the country has been rattled by strikes, beginning with striking attorneys in service of the government and continuing with the doctors' strike. Meanwhile, the trade union and teachers threaten to engulf the rest of the population in strikes. And the pretext? According to some anarchists, it is due to the high prices of food and housing, while those belonging to the medical profession are protesting the future of public medicine. RELATED:Is Israel really more expensive than the rest of the world? It seems that the striking middle class has forgotten Israel's class struggle of yesteryear, when people championed the poor egalitarian society and warded off the wealthy capitalists' exploitation of workers.Within that poor society there was little, yet we all shared what little there was. Those of us who were raised modestly studied and worked hard to make a living, yet it never occurred to us that the state "owed" us affordable housing. I, for one, was content to begin my career and family in a cheap one-room apartment in the poorest neighborhood of Jerusalem, with an ice-box replacing a fridge.The government may have inflicted upon us a regime of socialism that kept us and the country poor, yet I never complained or protested. And over the years–without inheriting money and often with one salary for the family—I received an education and eventually acquired a higher standard of housing.Lest one think that coincidental good fortune was my lot, my children are proof that this is not the case. Compared with many of today's younger generation who claim unbearable burdens that they cannot afford, my three children refrained from extended trips to South America and the sub-continent, and instead chose to be conscientious in their studies and building their careers. And without assistance or complaints, they are now comfortably settled, housed, and employed.My impression is that today's younger generation is simply spoiled: They seem woefully unwilling to build themselves up patiently and frugally, and instigated by political parties, the Histadrut, or professional strikers, have discovered that it is much easier to demand that the government dip into its pockets and pay their bills than toiling hard to attain the means they think they need immediately. They unfairly criticize the powers that be without stopping for a minute and reflecting on the positive aspects of what the "careless government" and "irresponsible prime minister" have achieved for their country since they came to power: a stable and thriving economy and full employment to begin with. And on the political arena, the mobilization of many Israeli friends to oppose the Palestinian moves in the UN, a stunning success in winning the support of the American Congress against the will of its hostile president, and the more recent scuttling the new anti-Israel flotilla and "flightilla" in the bud.
Understandably, high prices bother every consumer and it is sound for a democratic society to petition for a redress. But when the prime minister develops a comprehensive package of reform, the strikers' and anarchists' first instinct is to reject it out of hand. How can Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu's intentions be put to the test if he's not even given the chance to implement any of his plans? If disorder, strikes and demonstrations, coupled with the euphoria of "revolution," are more preferable to the public than governmental reform and exploring new avenues, then the strikes are nothing more than pathetic attempts to bring the government down.And claims that the protests are similar to those occurring in the Arab world are ridiculous to say the least. The demonstrators in the Arab Spring acted largely against illegitimate governments, while Israel holds democratic and unrigged electionsIn their present form the strikes have degenerated into the lowest form of politics. The protesters and the politicians that claim to support them bandy about slogans to the effect that they're "doing it for the public good." Sentences like "rescuing public medicine" or "rescuing public education" ring hollow when you consider their insistence that they are representing the working class – as if everyone else, including this writer, do not work. Not that I particularly care for the likes of Histadrut chairman Ofer Eini et al to represent me. From the safety of their air-conditioned offices, those politicians, along with your average unionized worker, haven't the first clue about the meaning of real work, with exception of course to the work involved in instigating pointless strikes.When doctors started their careers, they were aware of the shift requirements of hospitals and they also knew what their salary would be. Their calls to "rescue public medicine" thus reek of duplicity. In public service—including medicine, transport, water, electricity, garbage collection, firemen, police and the like—a ban on strikes should be imposed by legislation, with those who elect to work elsewhere free to do so.To conclude, I will return to my original argument: This country desperately needs its national resources to be kept as stable as possible. Ultimately, Israel's precarious situation globally means the time has come to build national unity and support for the ruling government in order to combat far greater issues than domestic squabbles. I thus urge the public to stop wasting time, attention, energy and resources on these fleeting mid-summer nights' dreams and roll up its sleeves and get back to work.The writer is a professor of Islamic, Middle Eastern and Chinese history at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and a member of the steering committee of the Ariel Center for Policy Research.
if(catID != 151){
var cont = `Take Israel home with the new Jerusalem Post Store
