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4 Teves 5766 - January 4, 2006 | Mordecai Plaut, director Published Weekly
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NEWS
Report by Council for Child Welfare Continues to Make Waves

by G. Kleiman

A report that the Council for Child Welfare released on 25 Kislev added fuel to the fire of public debate and drew numerous responses from across the public and political spectrum.

The report said Israel has 760,000 impoverished children, representing 44 percent of the total population. Most of the reactions noted that conditions for children have worsened as a result of the economic policy introduced by former Finance Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, who slashed Children's Allowances along with other Bituach Leumi allotments, a policy that hit hardest at large families and the lowerclass.

A spokesman for Deputy Welfare Minister Rabbi Avrohom Ravitz told Yated Ne'eman, "The warning lights related to poverty in Israel and children at risk have been flashing for a long time and the government should place this issue at the top of the agenda rather than mere words. The Welfare Ministry is demanding hundreds of millions of shekels in budget increases to take care of children at risk and the war on poverty, but so far these demands have gone unanswered. We hope that as a result of raising the issue again and again somebody will allocate the necessary resources. The Welfare Ministry is of the opinion that Bituach Leumi's plan for the war against poverty is the best [option] available and the government must adopt it."

MK Rabbi Moshe Gafni said, "The report on the poor in Israel is mostly about children, and this is the unavoidable result of the cruel, merciless policy of the Sharon, Netanyahu, Likud, Shinui and NRP government: to make the rich richer and to harm the poor and the middle class. The cuts and ongoing blows to the lowerclass have wreaked destruction to the social fabric of Israel, destruction that is not found among Western nations, and it is devoid of humanity and most of all bereft of Jewish ethics. The gap that this wicked government created between the classes, between the rich and the poor, causes social destruction whose end no one can foresee. UTJ will fight with all its might to bring about just equality and to close the social gaps in Israel."

 

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