We innocently believed that the Hebrew language lost some of its vocabulary in the course of the time with the deceitful previous Israeli government rule, like "robbery of the public funds". That government signed an agreement with the Islamic Movement for an payments of tens of billions to the Arabs, without supervision or record-keeping, all for the promise that they would agree to lift their finger for the Lapid-Benet-Abbas government.
Benet's close advisor, who resigned in the course of his tenure, told that Yair Lapid carried "an open check" when he went to Kfar Kassam, to a meeting of the Islamic Council to ensure their support of the government. So one cannot call it robbery or blackmail but an alignment of terms, amending of conditions and repairing of discrepancies. Smooth words to cover up the biggest deception in the history of the State geared to buy votes with money, lots of it.
At the time, we thought, and even wrote, that the day would come when the treacherous government would collapse and in its stead, a government would emerge to right the budget chicanery against the chareidi sector. And the bandits would have some shame and revise their ugly lexicon of how to criticize payments to the chareidi community.
After all, they paid off the Arabs, supporters of Hamas and Hizbullah, a sum of 53 billion shekel. So it would be seem to give the chareidim a tenth of that sum — and that just to update budgets that have not been updated for years.
But the word 'shame' was appropriated by that group for its own purposes of serving the elected government and not for the sake of democratic government whose goal is just to realize its promises to the voters. The previous government broke all of its campaign guarantees — without exception — to the voters which included the clear promise that it would not rely on votes from supporters of terror from the Arab list.
This present government promised, and they received a solid supporting mandate to realize its promises. So it should not be surprising if they do so.
This does not prevent the government opponents from using the word 'shame' when a top reporter suggested adding the word 'loot,' without their even attempting to look in the mirror and blush
at the lies which they are feeding the public.
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The Amazing Predictions of the Treasury for 40 Years from Now
In an unprecedented step, the budget division of the Treasury presented a dissenting document to the government against support of the coalition budget. In it, the director of the Budget Division, Yugav Gardos, warned against what he called heavy economic repercussions of some of the clauses appearing in the government decision. This includes the funds for the chareidi educational system, a budget for yeshivos and for food stamps.
He writes: "Even before implementation of the government decision and its negative impact on the economy, without any change in the scope of employment of chareidi males, the aggregate decrease of the GNP until 2060 is expected to reach some 6,708 billion shekel. In addition, in 2065, there will be need to raise direct taxes by 16% in order to maintain the level of services which the State supplies without increasing the deficit."
When I first read this message, I suspected an error. No one knows what will be a decade from now, five years from now or even one year. We sometimes even wonder what tomorrow will bring.
But Yugav Gardos, a mere forty-year-old, knows what will be in 2065? But this was no error because that figure appears elsewhere as well. Forty-two years from now, when he will be an octogenarian pensioner, he predicts that there will be need to up direct taxes by 16% if the coalition budget presented now will be approved. This is what is called "long term planning."
Here in Israel, where they have difficulty planning what will be in a year or two, they will surely rejoice to discover that there is someone who can predict what will be a few decades hence. Let us just remind young Mr. Gardos that if someone had predicted two decades ago that Israeli would be an energy world power thanks to the huge gas reserves that were discovered, he would have had to seek work in the sci-fi field.
