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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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