Homeless Israelis Have Time to Protest

In the local media spectacle going on now over the homeless protestors, no reporter would consider asking why in the world someone without the basic necessity of a home would devote time to the luxury of public demonstration. Simple: anyone who earns less than the average Israeli wage can receive approximately the average wage in unemployment benefits without the hassle of actually working.

Ninety-two homeless people marched to Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's residence in Jerusalem on Monday evening to demand that every Israeli homeless person be given a decent home, as the group continued to maintain a tent camp in a Jerusalem park as part of their struggle.

The group, which began the march from an encampment in the city's Kikar Moshe Bar-Am where they have been living in 20 tents for the past three weeks, launched the march to protest the fact that some 53,000 Israelis remain homeless, according to Ayala Sabag, the group's leader.

"These are people without a mouth to speak, like the son in the Pessah Seder who does not know how to ask," she said. She insisted that the encampment would remain in place "until the State of Israel gives every Israeli a home."

Right. Israel's flirtation with the socialist welfare has bankrupted the world's most successful implementers of the free market. Israel doesn't have the money to defend itself, let alone provide a home to those who it forcibly expelled from Gaza to bring "peace."

Unfortunately, Israel is half-socialist (and half-free). Every sector with minimal government involvement thrives, while the protexia-dominated sectors largely create misery. The best example has been the Maccabiah Games' bridge disaster, in which cronyism enabled a third-world-style bridge to be created in the midst of the leading engineering community. When the structure collapsed from the weight of people alone, falling athletes died from simple exposure to the polluted Yarkon river below. Because it runs through one of the world's highest population densities, it is therefore potentially Israel's greatest natural asset. How did it turn into a deadly sewage carrier despite Israel's "progressive" environmental legislation? The answer is that there is no such thing as an altruistic government system such as socialism. There is only freedom or cronyism. Those with protexia, mostly government enterprises, received environmental waivers in order to dump dangerous waste directly into the Yarkon river.

Olmert's leadership has given a huge boost to the thriving protexia industry.