POVERTY: Israel: second-highest income poverty rate in the OECD

MICHAEL OMER-MAN : 05/25/2011
OECD’s Better Life Index puts Israel near member states’ average, shows strengths in education, weakness in workforce participation. In a new index released this week by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, the Better Life Initiative, Israel hovers around average compared to other OECD states, excelling in life expectancy, education, birthrate and sense of strong community. However, the findings show that in some areas, much is lacking compared to other OECD countries.
To determine how much room people have to live in, the OECD measures the number of rooms per person in a household. The average home in Israel has 1.1 rooms per person, less than the OECD average of 1.6. Also, 4.4 percent of dwellings in Israel lack private access to indoor toilets, in contrast to the OECD average of 2.5%.
Regarding income, Israel comes in both above and below average when compared with OECD countries. The average household disposable income in Israel, after taxes, is $19,456, which is lower than the OECD average of $22,284. However, Israel is high above the OECD average for average household wealth, although the organization’s report notes several times that data for this indicator is only available for a small number of countries.
The average household wealth, which also measures real-estate assets and the total value of a household’s financial worth, is $62,684, compared with the OECD average of $36,808.
When it comes to employment, the number of working-age (15-64) Israelis who have a paid job is 59%, below the OECD average of 65%.
However, when measuring only those participating in the workforce, Israel’s unemployment rate is 1.85%, lower than the average.
Education is one of Israel’s stronger points. Compared to an OECD average of 73% high-school graduation rates, Israel excels with 81% of adults in the labor market possessing the equivalent of a high-school degree.
When it comes to reading comprehension, Israel scored lower than the average.
Other indicators measured by the OECD are less economically oriented and attempt to measure quality of life. One such measure attempts to determine the strength of social networks and communities. Asked if they believe they know someone they could rely on in a time of need, 93% of Israelis answered yes, putting Israel close to the OECD average.
When it comes to personal safety, Israel is relatively average, with 3% of people in Israel reported falling victim to assault in the previous 12 months, lower than the average of 4%. The homicide rate was slightly higher than the OECD average.
Among other notable findings is that Israel has the highest fertility rate of all countries in the OECD, with an average of 2.96 children per household, above the average of 1.74.
The country with the second-highest birthrate is Iceland, with 2.22 children per household.
Israel is also very much a country of immigrants, with 26.5% of the population being foreign-born, coming in second behind Luxembourg. The OECD average is 11.75%.
The average life expectancy in Israel is 81.1 years, above the OECD average of 79.3. However, the health findings were not all positive. Israelis ranked the 6th lowest in terms of feeling well-rested, being treated with respect, smiling and experiencing enjoyment. Also, more Israelis reported negative experiences (pain, worry, sadness, stress and depression) than any other country in the OECD.
Also reflecting negatively, Israel has the second-highest income poverty rate in the OECD, coming in only behind Mexico. While the OECD average of income poverty is 11.1%, 20% of Israelis qualify as living in poverty. In addition, 39% of Israelis “find it difficult or very difficult to live on their current income,” a much higher rate than the average of 24%.
Only 36 percent of Israelis believe their communities are tolerant places for ethnic minorities, migrants, gays and lesbians, ranking fourth lowest in the OECD
http://www.jpost.com/Business/BusinessNews/Article.aspx?id=222231

POVERTY: Israel: highest child poverty rate in OECD

Israel and Mexico have the highest rate of child poverty among the 35 member countries of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), with more than a quarter of children living in poor households, a new report released by the Paris-based organization has revealed.

According to the report, which is entitled “Doing Better for Families” and provides detailed data on families in all of the member-countries, child poverty rates in Israel are several times higher than in Denmark, which has the best record, and highlights that roughly one in five children lives below the poverty line.
The report also notes that while most countries with high levels of female employment rates tend to have low child poverty rates, Israel, Portugal and the United States are the exceptions to this rule.
http://www.jpost.com/Headlines/Article.aspx?id=219031

MALNUTRITION: Gaza food situation tight as Karni crossing closed

RAMALLAH, 7 March 2011 (IRIN) - The complete closure of Karni crossing on the Israel-Gaza border announced on 2 March will make the delivery of food aid to Gaza more difficult, according to UN agencies assisting Palestinians in the Gaza Strip where over half the population is estimated to be food insecure.
The closure of Karni will also add 20 percent to the cost of aid delivery, said Chris Gunness, spokesperson for the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) in Jerusalem, at a time when UNRWA is facing a budget deficit of over US$50 million.
Some 750,000 Palestinians receive UNRWA food assistance in Gaza, out of about one million refugees living in the territory.
Karni, controlled by Israel, is the only commercial crossing with the facilities to allow large numbers of trucks to enter Gaza. Closed to trucks since June 2007, the conveyor belt had been operating to transfer grain, until the Israeli authorities announced its complete closure on 2 March.
Kerem Shalom, a smaller commercial crossing at the southernmost point on the Gaza-Israel border, lacks facilities to allow large numbers of trucks to enter Gaza, according to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA). It is now the only point where humanitarian and commercial supplies can enter Gaza.
“Kerem Shalom crossing does not have the capacity to meet Gaza’s needs, and there must be more than one operational crossing to import humanitarian and commercial supplies for Gaza’s 1.5 million people,” said UNRWA spokesperson Gunness. “Forcing humanitarian organizations through the bottleneck of Kerem Shalom will do little to relieve the humanitarian suffering of the people of Gaza.”
He added that supplies to Gaza were still at about 40 percent of pre-June 2007 levels.

Conveyer belt move
Maj Guy Inbar, Israeli coordinator of government activities in the (Palestinian) territories (COGAT), told IRIN COGAT had decided to move the conveyor belt from Karni to Kerem Shalom.
“Only the conveyor belt at Karni had been operating two days per week, due to security concerns, to enter grain and aggregates [building materials],” said Inbar, “and moving the belt will increase the number of days it can operate per week and the types of goods that can enter.”
Kerem Shalom has a capacity of 300 trucks per day, but due to “limited Palestinian requests”, an average of 170-180 trucks enter Gaza daily, he added.
“If Israel closes Karni crossing, using the conveyor belt at Kerem Shalom to enter supplies, it is expected that it will be more expensive due to higher fees and the greater distance trucks must drive to reach the crossing,” Jean-Noel Gentile, head of the World Food Programme (WFP) in Gaza, told IRIN. The agency provides food assistance to an average of 313,000 non-refugee beneficiaries in Gaza.
“The main factors contributing to food insecurity in Gaza are lack of purchasing power and rising food prices, and an economy relying almost entirely on public sector and humanitarian assistance,” said Gentile. “There is no sustainable growth in the present conditions in the Gaza Strip because of the blockade,” he added.
Israel tightened its blockade of Gaza, due to security concerns, after Hamas seized control of the territory in 2007. Through prolonged border closures Israel has restricted the import of fuel and commercial goods, as well as most construction and raw materials, reports OCHA.
Meanwhile, Gaza’s unemployment rate hovers at 50 percent, according to the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics (PCBS).

Few protein-rich foods
Samia Afaneh, a 40-year-old refugee from the Sheikh Radwan area of Gaza City, and her family of 10, receive food assistance from UNRWA every three months, including flour, cooking oil, powdered milk and sugar.
Samia’s husband used to work at an Israeli crossing, but since the blockade was tightened he is unemployed. “Even with the assistance, my children are still undernourished,” she said. “I was diagnosed with anaemia when I was pregnant, and so was one of our daughters.”
Samia said her family could not afford protein-rich foods. “We can only afford one kilogram of fish or two chickens per month to feed 10 people,” she said.
WFP is collecting information at the household level for a report due in May that will explore if Israel’s easing of its blockade since June 2010 had affected prices, food availability and livelihoods in Gaza.
Since the easing of the blockade, Israel has allowed a limited amount of building materials to enter Gaza. Israel has approved 43 UNRWA projects, worth 11 percent of the total work plan submitted by the agency, reports OCHA.
“Since the second half of 2010 some aggregates have been allowed to enter Gaza via Karni crossing, but the number of opening days of the crossing is not great enough to enter both the aggregates and sufficient supplies of wheat grain and animal feed,” said Gentile of WFP.

Soaring food prices
There is not enough wheat in Gaza and this affects delivery of food assistance to nearly one million beneficiaries by UNRWA and WFP, which usually purchase flour from local mills. Dependency of the poorest on food assistance has increased in recent months due to a sharp increase in the market price of wheat flour (by some 50 percent since August 2010), reports OCHA.
In the second half of 2010, the food consumer price index (CPI) in the West Bank and Gaza spiked as a reflection of soaring food prices in the international market, said the Palestinian Authority (PA). Such trends are expected to extend into 2011, and while the CPI is rising, income levels and purchasing power in Gaza are decreasing.
Given that expenditure on food accounts for 60 percent of total household expenditure, and with current levels of food insecurity in Gaza at 52 percent, a continuing increase in food prices on the current scale will push hundreds of thousands more Palestinians into poverty and food insecurity, the PA warned.
Between 2007 and 2009 there was a dramatic increase in food cash expenditure - by 67 percent in the Gaza Strip - out of total cash expenditure, while the amount of caloric intake is decreasing, according to PCBS. Between 2007 and 2009 the caloric intake per capita in Gaza and the West Bank decreased by 18 percent, PCBS says.
Abdel Salibi, 70, from Beach Camp in Gaza City, and his family of five, receive food assistance from UNRWA. “Our family can only afford to buy meat products every few months,” Abdel said.
“The roof of our home near the beachfront, is still damaged from the war [Israel’s 23-day offensive in Gaza ending in January 2009] when Israeli gunboats would fire at the camp,” he said, since building materials are scarce on the local market.

http://www.irinnews.org/report.aspx?ReportID=92114

POVERYTY: Israel: poverty amidst plenty

By Moshe Arens : 11.Jan.2011

We should examine the causes of the growing economic inequality that characterizes Israeli society at this time.
For years it has been said that Israel has no natural resources below the ground and that the country's natural resources are above ground - its population. Even though it now turns out that Israel does have natural resources below the ground, or more correctly under the sea, for years to come Israel's economy will still have to rely primarily on the talents and skills of its population. It is they that have propelled the Israeli economy to record heights in recent years.
Even the usually not Israel-friendly weekly, The Economist, in last week's issue applauded Israel's achievements in advanced technology. An article by its business commentator stated that adjusted for population, "Israel leads the world in the number of high-tech start-ups and the size of the venture-capital industry".
Israel has become "a high-tech superpower," he writes. The result of these high-tech achievements is that Israel, as a country, is growing wealthy. And yet, as Israelis rightly insist on reminding themselves, while many Israelis may have become richer, there is poverty amidst plenty in Israel. The gap between rich and poor is growing yearly, and inevitably the attendant social stresses are bound to follow.
Before we jump to the conclusion that this distortion in the social fabric of Israeli society is the result of capitalism running wild in Israel and can easily be rectified by a more progressive fiscal and welfare policy, we should examine the causes of the growing economic inequality that characterizes Israeli society at this time.
It turns out that it is the direct and inevitable result of the growing high-technology sector in the local economy developing in an age of world globalization. In a world in which there are essentially no borders for scientific and technological activities and the businesses that develop from them, the pay scale for those engaged in these activities tends to be more or less uniform throughout the world. The high level of pay in the high-tech sector of the economy drags along with it the pay of the many sectors associated with its business development - attorneys, accountants, investment bankers, analysts and stockbrokers.
Everyone else - from physicians to unskilled workers - is pretty much left behind, though raised somewhat by the rising tide. This situation is exacerbated by the massive import of foreign workers who provide the economy's needs for manual labor at a pay scale considerably lower than that appropriate for Israeli workers. They, in turn, are either driven out of the labor market or forced to work at lower wages, further increasing the economic inequality in Israeli society.
On top of this, two large sectors of Israeli society - ultra-Orthodox Jews and Arabs - are barely represented among the population of skilled workers who participate in the high-technology industry. Much of the poverty in Israel is concentrated there. We need to look no further for the causes of the large degree of economic inequality that exists in Israel today.
Welfare payments can only partially alleviate this problem. The importation of foreign workers needs to be stopped once and for all. Ultimately, the solution lies in an educational framework that will make it possible for those sectors of Israel's population that lack the skills needed in a high-technology economy to acquire these skills.
Fortunately, such a framework already exists. It is the IDF. It performs its primary function of defending the country, while also serving as a melting pot, contributing to nation-building in Israel. But in addition it is an excellent school in which soldiers acquire skills. The Economist points out that the IDF "is more than a high-tech incubator, it sifts the entire population for talent ... and inculcates an ethic of self-reliance and problem-solving".
This is nothing new to Israelis. That Israel's economic development owes a great debt to the IDF is well known. What has been missing until now is the participation of ultra-Orthodox Jews and Arabs in the army. Whereas the ultra-Orthodox community and many Arabs seem to think that Israel is doing them a favor by exempting them from military service and some see in civilian national service a proper substitute, by not serving in the IDF they are actually being deprived of the best education that Israel can provide.
The road to creating greater equality in Israeli society leads through compulsory military service for all. Military service in Israel is not only a burden but also a great benefit. It is also part of the equality of obligations that any democratic society demands of all its citizens.

http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/opinion/israel-poverty-amidst-plenty-1.336332

MALNUTRITION: Israel: Gaps among nation’s children a ‘social time bomb'

RUTH EGLASH AND GREER FAY CASHMAN : 12/23/2010
One-third of Israeli children live below the poverty line, with a major malnutrition problem in in minorities. The socioeconomic gaps between different classes of Israeli-born children could soon become explosive, Dr. Yitzhak Kadman, head of the National Council for the Child, warned on Wednesday. He spoke as the council published its annual report for 2010.
“The gaps between those children who have and those who do not is an issue that is apparent across the board in this report,” Kadman, who presented the 680-page document to President Shimon Peres on Wednesday morning, told The Jerusalem Post.
“It’s not only about economic gaps between those children whose families do not have money even for medicines and those who get to fly abroad on vacation twice a year,” he continued.
“The gap is also widening in terms of education, health, crime and welfare; this situation is not only intolerable for the children who are clearly the victims, but it is also a ticking social time bomb.”
According to the report, out of the 2,468,700 children who lived in Israel in 2009, 850,300, or one in three, lived below the poverty line, nearly five times as many poor children as there were in 1980.
“The situation in Israel is very disturbing,” Kadman said. “One-third of Israeli children live below the poverty line. For minorities such as the Beduin and the haredim there is a big problem of malnutrition and there has become a clear link between parents with a low income and those teens who end up with a criminal record.”
He added: “Compare it on an international scale and we see that in Israel children study in classes with too many pupils and overall the government spends less on each child; they are even talking about cutting child allotments even further.”
Kadman also pointed to the dire situation of the roughly 100,000 children of migrant workers and asylum-seekers who do not have any legal status.
“This means that for them they do not have health care or a social worker to look out for them,” he said. “It is not one or two or even hundreds, there are thousands... This situation needs to be addressed.”
Several other potential flash points highlighted by the statistics include the falling rate of adoption, which Kadman explained could be viewed positively in that there were fewer children being born into broken homes, but was also happening because the legal system was becoming increasingly less flexible in allowing willing and able families to adopt children with troubled backgrounds.
In addition, he said marriages and births among teenage girls was also a challenge facing the country, with 1,556 minors having babies in 2009. Out of that number, 20 were under the age of 15, 124 under 16, 372 under 17 and 1,040 under 18.
Roughly 22 percent were Jews and the rest were Arabs.
While the report presented some disturbing points in the country’s treatment of children, there were some optimistic elements, such as a fall in the number of youths committing crimes. In 2009, the police filed 33,023 reports against minors, down from 47.2 reports per 1,000 youths in 2000 to 45.3 reports per 1,000 youths 2009.
Other positive points, noted Kadman, were an increase in education levels in the Arab community; a drop in the number of children hurt in traffic accidents (from 70 a decade ago to 35 in 2009) and a rise in volunteerism among teens.
Peres said it was unacceptable that more than a third of Israeli children were undernourished and deprived of the ability to develop as they should. He called for more investment in the nation’s children not only in terms of their material needs but also in matters of education.
He urged that the authorities make education more accessible to all, and pay more attention to literacy, because every schoolchild should be able to read.
Peres lauded the dedication of the National Council for the Child and suggested that the organization and Beit Hanassi join forces in a major effort to advance the welfare of the nation’s youngest children by ensuring that they all receive milk and health services from the nation’s health clinics.
Peres said he was fearful of what future statistics would reveal and that what concerned him most was the growing abuse of children, who in ever-increasing numbers have been victims of sexual assault, and domestic and playground violence.
Overall, 161,042 children were born in Israel in 2009, with 69.4% being Jewish; 24.1% Muslim; 2.9% listed without a religion; 1.7% Christian; and 1.9% Druse.
The largest population of children was in Jerusalem (308,083); Tel Aviv had 78,290 children and Bnei Brak 71,342.
http://www.jpost.com/NationalNews/Article.aspx?id=200634

POVERTY: Israel Now Builds Separation Wall With Africa

 Adam Morrow and Khaled Moussa Al-Omrani
CAIRO, Dec 15, 2010 (IPS) - After the separation barrier against Palestinian territories, Israel has begun to build a new wall, this one to keep migrants from Africa out. The new wall is coming up on the Egyptian border, and with Egyptian support.
The Israeli government approved plans late last month to build a detention camp near its border with Egypt to house illegal African immigrants. Local activists decried the move, which they say flies in the face of internationally accepted human rights norms.
"The idea of a prison built expressly for African immigrants is not only racist, it also contravenes basic tenets of international law," Hafez Abu Saeda, president of the Cairo-based Egyptian Organisation for Human Rights told IPS.
On Nov. 28, Israel's cabinet approved construction of a camp to temporarily accommodate undocumented African immigrants that enter Israel from neighbouring Egypt. According to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who provided little else by way of detail, the project comes within the context of a wider plan to halt the "wave of illegal immigrants" entering the country in search of employment.
Israel claims that within recent years tens of thousands of African migrants have illicitly crossed the Egypt-Israel border into its territory. Once inside the country, these migrants are often hired as manual labourers - at relatively low wages - by Israeli farms and in settlements.
This influx, Netanyahu was quoted as saying, "is growing and it threatens the jobs of Israelis. It is changing the face of the state and we have to stop it."
The Egypt-Israel border represents a major transit route for African migrants, both political refugees and job seekers, coming mainly from Sudan, Ethiopia and Eritrea. Attempts to illegally cross the frontier - already tense due to its proximity with the besieged Gaza Strip - often result in fatal clashes with Egyptian border police.
In late October, a Sudanese national was killed by Egyptian border authorities while attempting to cross into Israel. A recent report by Human Rights Watch noted that since 2007 Egyptian border authorities have killed at least 85 African migrants, recording 24 fatalities this year and 19 the year before.
The Israeli prime minister, for his part, stressed that the planned detention centre was intended to house illegal job seekers and not political refugees.
"We are not stopping the entry of war refugees," he was quoted as saying. "But we have to stop the mass entry of illegal work seekers due to the severe impact they can have on the nature and future of the state of Israel."
Abu Saeda, however, challenged Israel's right to make the distinction.
"The issue of who is and who isn't a political refugee should be decided by the UN High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR), which is mandated with determining if migrants' lives are in jeopardy in their home countries," he said.
Abu Saeda also refuted Israeli claims that African immigrants represented an economic liability.
"Israel welcomes the Falasha (Ethiopian Jews) as well as Jews from other countries, such as Russia, even going so far as to offer financial incentives to Jewish immigrants," he said. "So how can they say immigrants are bad for their economy?"
The last week of November saw Israel begin construction of a 250-kilometre- long electric fence along its border with Egypt. Israeli officials say the 360 million dollar fence, which will incorporate high-tech surveillance cameras, aims to stop the influx of African migrants.
A 1979 peace treaty between Egypt and Israel strictly limits military and security deployments - by either side - on or near the shared border. Nevertheless, Egyptian officialdom appeared indifferent to news of Israel's planned border fence.
Egyptian Foreign Ministry spokesman Hossam Zaki has said that Egypt neither approved nor disapproved of the barrier "as long as it is built on Israeli territory." He went on to describe the project as "an internal Israeli affair" that neither threatened Egypt's national interests nor violated its sovereignty.
The planned fence will not be the only barricade to go up in the fraught border zone.
Over the last year, Egypt has been building an underground steel barrier along its 14-kilometre border with the Gaza Strip with the ostensible aim of disrupting smuggling operations. Since Israel - and later Egypt - hermetically sealed its border with the strip in 2007, Gaza's roughly 1.5 million inhabitants have come to rely on cross-border tunnels for their most basic needs.
"The frontier zone is becoming a region of walls and fences," Ayman Abdelaziz Salaama, international law professor at Cairo University, told IPS. "For the last ten years, Israel - ever obsessed with its own security - has surrounded itself with walls and fortifications.
"But no country in history has been able to build walls high enough to keep out those determined to get in," he added.
Abu Saeda agreed, noting that no amount of border security could ever entirely deter attempts at emigration as long as certain countries continued to suffer chronic economic stagnation.
"Instead of building camps and fences, the international community should promote development in these countries so as to alleviate the root causes of undocumented migration, namely, unemployment and poverty," he said.
A conversation with one undocumented Darfurian migrant resident in Cairo, arrested earlier this year for attempting to cross the border illegally, appeared to bear this out.
"My cousins snuck into Israel and found jobs with relatively good salaries, some of which they sent back to Darfur," he told IPS on condition of anonymity. "Even though I was jailed for 30 days for attempting it myself, I'm thinking about trying my luck at the border again."
He added: "Because the situation in Darfur won't improve any time soon."
http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=53868

POVERTY: Gaza

A new study has revealed that the population of those living below the poverty line in the Israeli-blockaded Gaza Strip exceeds the same population in Rwanda. The survey, carried out by the Palestinian Authority (PA), shows that 63.1 percent of the 1.5-million Palestinians in the impoverished coastal sliver, where Tel Aviv's siege has prevented access to food, fuel and other necessities, live below the United Nations-defined poverty line, Press TV's correspondent in the enclave Akram al-Satarri reported on Tuesday. This is while the eastern-central African country has 60 percent of its populace under the poverty level of approximately $0.43 per day. Israel placed Gaza under an all-out blockade in mid-June 2007, claiming it was cracking down on the Palestinian resistance movement, Hamas, which had won democratic elections to rule the strip a year earlier. By enforcing the restrictions, Tel Aviv both disregarded the group's right to power and found an opportunity to impose more suffering on the rest of the Palestinians. "We are talking about the severe economic situation that the Palestinians (are) facing. Because…there is no industrial zones, no job opportunities," said economic analyst, Mohsin Abu Ramadan. "More than 10 percent of Gazans, mostly children, are physically stunted due to malnutrition," Satarri added. The strip is, meanwhile, far from recovering from the full-fledged Israeli war at the turn of 2009, which killed more than 1,400 Palestinians and inflicted a damage of more than $1.6 billion on its economy. Ramadan said that the continuation of the blockade as well as the offensives had "destroyed the infrastructure" of the devastated strip.
http://www.presstv.ir/detail/141666.html

POVERTY: Israel: Haredi unemployment is hurting Israel's economy

Bank of Israel chief Stanley Fischer says that the deepening poverty among the Haredi community is an unsustainable economic problem.
The rate of growth among the ultra-Orthodox, in which a majority of men don't work, is an economic problem, Bank of Israel Governor Stanley Fischer said earlier this week.
Speaking with foreign journalists, Fischer spoke about the deepening poverty among the Haredi community. Meanwhile, the situation in terms of poverty among another relatively impoverished group, Israeli Arabs, is improving, the governor said.
If 70% of the men in 10% of the population don't work, it becomes a problem of macroeconomic magnitude, Fischer said. The Haredim as a group are growing faster than the rest of the population. Moreover, he said, that speaking with figures in the Haredi community, it is apparent they do not grasp the problem.
The situation is unsustainable, Fischer warned: 60% of Haredim live in poverty and the proportion is rising. "We can't have an ever-increasing proportion of the population continuing to not go to work," Fischer said
http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=3604033512937490051

POVERTY: Poverty among Holocaust survivors in Israel

Poverty among Holocaust survivors in Israel is something of a dirty little secret. An estimated 70,000 survivors — one-third of those living in Israel — don't have enough money to make ends meet, victims' support groups say. The survivors show up in soup kitchens or government welfare agencies.
Tsipora Yaffe, 74, who escaped the 1941 Odessa massacre that killed her father, collects recyclable bottles from trash bins and off the street. "It's humiliating," said Yaffe, who does not live at the shelter. "But I close my eyes and do it."
In a country where the Holocaust still shapes social and political debate, such stories stir anger. Advocates for survivors say that in the zeal to "never forget" those who died, the needs of survivors are being forgotten.
"As a member of Knesset and a citizen, I am ashamed of how the Jewish state has treated Holocaust survivors," said lawmaker Moshe Gafni, chairman of the Knesset Finance Committee, after the government recently delayed implementation of expanded medical subsidies for survivors. "The treatment is disgraceful. (It) shames me and should shame all of us."
Shimon Sabag, a former food vendor who founded the shelter, said he was stunned to discover how many Holocaust victims live in poverty.
"I always thought these people had been taken care of," said the father of two, who started the Helping Hands charity, "Yadezer" in Hebrew, with a $1 million settlement he received after breaking his back in a work-related car accident.
He began with a soup kitchen in Haifa and noticed how many people in line had tattooed numbers on their arms.
"It gave me shivers," he said. From there, his group began offering home food delivery and free medical and dental care.
In late 2008, he opened the 12-bed shelter, which quickly filled to capacity. With a donation from the German-chapter of the International Christian Embassy Jerusalem, construction began this year on the expansion next door. Work was suspended for lack of money.
With about half of Holocaust survivors older than 80 and dying at a rate of 35 a day, Sabag called the situation urgent. "We only have a short time to fix what we can."
Not enough
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2012302650_holocaustpoor08.html?syndication=rss

POVERTY: Gaza and the blockade

Here are some of the key humanitarian challenges facing the people of Gaza and the relief agencies that work there as a result of the Israeli blockade.
FOOD
Over three quarters of Gaza's population is food insecure or vulnerable to food insecurity, relying heavily on aid subsidies, according to a report by the World Food Programme and the UN's Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), published in November last year. The report said the population of Gaza was being sustained at "the most basic or minimum humanitarian standard."
Food security exists when all people, at all time, have physical, social and economic access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food that meets their dietary needs and food preferences for an active and healthy life. Food insecurity exists when this access is jeopardised.
Food price inflation, a deterioration or destruction of livelihoods and the population's increasing inability to cope with the difficult circumstances all contribute to food insecurity in Gaza, the report said.
Restrictions on imports and exports, and increased restricted access to agricultural and fishing areas, further undermine Palestinians' access to food, leaving many dependent on food aid. Overall, food insecurity affects 61 percent of households in Gaza while an additional 16 percent are considered vulnerable to food insecurity, the WFP/FAO report added. Only 23 percent of households in the Gaza Strip are considered marginally secure and food secure.
The report found that 71 percent of people in the Gaza Strip said they received humanitarian assistance with the rest saying they did not receive any aid.
AGRICULTURE AND FISHING
Restricted imports of livestock, seeds and seedlings, plastic piping, iron bars for animal shelters, water pumps, filters and irrigation pipes, fishing nets, engine spare parts, veterinary drugs and cement are decimating Gaza's agriculture and fishing industries.
Israel bars the imports of building materials including steel, cement and pipes, saying Hamas could use them to manufacture weapons.
Farmers have been unable to rebuild agricultural land or vital roads because of a lack of construction materials like concrete and heavy equipment. Goods imported via tunnels from Egypt are often sold at inflated prices that most Palestinians cannot afford.
As of June 2009, 46 percent of agricultural land in Gaza was assessed as inaccessible or out of production because of destruction caused during Operation 'Cast Lead' or because the land is inside a no-go area along the northern and eastern borders with Israel, according to a report by EUNIDA for the European Commission last year.
Restricted access to fishing grounds has depleted catches and revenues. "The fact that this coastal population now imports fish from Israel and through tunnels under the Gaza-Egypt border speaks to the absurdity of the situation," the Association of International Development Agencies said in a recent statement.
Gaza's waste water treatment infrastructure also needs upgrading to avoid the contamination of agricultural land and to create an alternative source of water for irrigation.
RECONSTRUCTION
Operation 'Cast Lead' caused some $268 million in damages, according to the United Nations. Israeli bombardments caused huge damage to already depleted infrastructure. Restrictions on imports of cement, other building materials and heavy lifting equipment are hampering efforts to rebuild vital roads, health and education services and power supplies.
POWER CUTS
Electricity shortages mean Gaza's population experiences rolling blackouts of up to 12 hours every day, according to an OCHA report, exacerbating the already difficult living conditions. Gaza's sole power plant, the Gaza Power Plant, is able to produce only half the electricity that it did prior to January 2010, due to a lack of funds to buy the industrial fuel needed to run the plant.
Hospitals and clinics often have to rely on back-up generators that are not designed to function for long periods and are often damaged as a result.
HEALTH
Many specialised treatments, such as for complex heart surgery and certain types of cancer, are not available in Gaza and patients are referred for treatment to hospitals outside the territory. But many patients have had their applications for exit permits denied or delayed by Israeli authorities and have missed their appointments. Some have died while waiting for referral, the World Health Organisation said in a January statement.
There are often shortages of key supplies and drugs. Delays of up to three months occur on imports of certain types of medical equipment, such as X‐ray machines and electronic devices. Clinical staff frequently lack the medical equipment they need while medical devices are often broken, missing spare parts or out of date, the WHO added.
Furthermore, health professionals in Gaza are cut off from the outside word and few receive training to update their skills and knowledge.
Rising unemployment and poverty - 42 percent of Gaza's workforce was unemployed in the first quarter of 2009 and 70 percent of the families were living on an income of less than one dollar a day per person in May 2008, according to OCHA - is likely to have long term adverse effects on the physical and mental health of the population, WHO said.
Other health problems include malnutrition, wasting and underweight children and aneamia.
The lack of building materials is affecting essential health facilities: the new surgical wing in Gaza's main Shifa hospital has remained unfinished since 2006. Hospitals and primary care facilities, damaged during operation 'Cast Lead', have not been rebuilt because construction materials are not allowed into Gaza.
POVERTY
A poverty survey carried out by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) showed that the number of refugees living in abject poverty since the onset of the blockade in 2007 has tripled. UNRWA found that 300,000 Palestine refugees live in conditions of abject poverty, from 100,000 in 2007. These families are completely unable to secure access to food and lack the means to purchase even the most basic items such as soap, school stationary and safe drinking water.
http://www.alertnet.org/db/an_art/55076/2010/05/1-141115-1.htm

MALNUTRITION: Gaza food supplies strangled by 1,000-day blockade

RAMALLAH, 30 May 2010 (IRIN) - The amount and quality of food available to the estimated 1.5 million Palestinians living in the Gaza Strip has been severely restricted by more than 1,000 days of a near-complete blockade, states a UN Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) report. [http://www.ochaopt.org/documents/gaza_agriculture_25_05_2010_fact_sheet_english.pdf] "Sixty-one percent of the Gaza population is food insecure," said Sarah Leppert, FAO's communications adviser for the West Bank and Gaza Strip. "There is a diverse range of foods available in Gaza; the problem is people do not have the means to purchase the food due to rising poverty and unemployment, now nearly 39 percent." Israel's import and access restrictions continue to suffocate the agriculture sector in Gaza, directly contributing to rising food insecurity, said acting Humanitarian Coordinator for the occupied Palestinian Territory (oPt), Philippe Lazzarini, in a joint statement with humanitarian aid agencies, and the Association of International Development Agencies (AIDA), representing more than 80 NGOs [http://www.ochaopt.org/documents/gaza_agriculture_25_05_2010_press_release_english.pdf] on 25 May from Gaza. Protein-rich foods such as meat and poultry are especially difficult for Gazans to afford. Families have resorted to coping mechanisms including borrowing money and relying on aid from humanitarian agencies operating in Gaza, said Leppert. The World Health Organization (WHO) is concerned by rising malnutrition indicators - increased cases of stunting, wasting and underweight children - and continuing high rates of anaemia among children and pregnant women. [http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=84018]. A poverty survey conducted by the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) shows that the number of Palestine refugees unable to access food and lacking the means to purchase even the most basic items, such as soap, school stationery and safe drinking water, has tripled since the imposition of the blockade in June 2007. [http://www.ochaopt.org/documents/ocha_opt_the_humanitarian_monitor_2010_04_english.pdf] "Thirty eggs used to cost seven NIS [Israeli shekels, about US$1.83], and now they cost 14 NIS [about $3.65]," said shop-owner Mahmoud Alkhor, 22, in Gaza City. Without a change in policy, aid dependency is only likely to grow, warns UNRWA, which is providing basic sustenance to nearly 80 percent of the Gaza population. Furthermore, the reduction in electricity supplies to Gaza as part of the Israeli blockade causes significant damage to vegetable crops due to the lack of refrigeration, as well as adding to production costs, says the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA). [http://www.ochaopt.org/documents/ocha_opt_gaza_electricity_crisis_2010_05_17.pdf] Health risks Goods coming through the tunnels from Egypt, sold at inflated prices and inaccessible to most Gazans, are not a viable solution, according to aid agencies in Gaza. "FAO is particularly concerned about the possible health risks posed by the unregulated entry of livestock and veterinary medicines to Gaza from Egypt via tunnels," said Leppert, fearing possible animal diseases in Gaza and transboundary disease outbreaks in the region. Since January 2009, Israeli naval forces have restricted the access of Gaza fishing boats to only three nautical miles from shore, often reduced to as much as 2nm in practice. Between 2008 and 2009, the total fishing catch decreased by 47 percent, and is insufficient to meet the demands of Gaza's growing population, according to FAO. However, according to Israel's Gaza District Coordination Office (DCO), there is no humanitarian crisis in Gaza. "Israel allows the passage of basic goods, building materials [for UN projects], products for agriculture; for example, Israel allowed 15 farmers to leave the strip two months ago for an education programme on farming in the Arava Institute [for Environmental Studies]," the DCO said. "Israel does not ration the amount of goods into Gaza provided they are on the list of permitted items; we also transfer vaccinations and other products for the farming sector. We work in cooperation with merchants and farmers and are attentive to their needs." Head of the DCO, Colonel Moshe Levi, told reporters on 26 May: "We do not know of a shortage in any field, and we enable the entrance of various different goods, and also the export of agricultural products from the Gaza Strip. Anything that would help Hamas to increase its military power is obviously not permitted to enter."

POVERTY: Israel admitted to OECD

JERUSALEM — The OECD on Wednesday said prospective new member Israel was expected to enjoy healthy 3.8 percent economic growth this year, with a fall in inflation in the near term.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is to formally accept the invitation to join the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development at its Paris headquarters on Thursday.
In its outlook released on Wednesday, the organisation forecast a further rise in Israel's gross domestic product (GDP) of 4.2 percent in 2011.
Israel's GDP grew by 0.7 percent in 2009, compared to an OECD average of minus 3.3 percent.
The organisation predicted that the rise in Israeli consumer prices would slow to 1.7 percent in 2010 from 3.3 percent last year, but would speed up again in 2011 with a 2.6 percent increase.
In the late 1970s and early 1980s, Israel was plagued by triple-digit inflation and forced to repeatedly devalue its currency.
Emerging from the doldrums, Israel in 1994 sent observers to the OECD in what was the first step on a long road to membership.
After the invitation was announced on May 10, Netanyahu said joining the group would open up new sources of capital for Israel.
With membership, Israel's status with foreign investment funds switches from an emerging economy to a developed one.
In a special press conference to mark the invitation Netanyahu, said there was also a diplomatic and perceptual dividend for Israel in being recognised for its technological and economic achievements rather than being seen only in the context of its conflict with the Palestinians.
And he pointed out that Israel's accession had been agreed by a consensus of the 31 existing OECD members -- any of which could have cast a veto.
Israel's per capita gross domestic product (GDP) was estimated at 28,400 dollars (23,000 euros) in 2009, which would place it 22nd among the organisation's 31 members.
This is behind Italy but ahead of South Korea, New Zealand, the Czech Republic, Portugal, Slovakia, Hungary, Poland, Chile, Mexico and Turkey.
Netanyahu says Israel's goal is to be in the top 15 countries within a decade.
Unlike most economies, Israel managed to withstand the economic downturn which has been sweeping the global economy, with the OECD praising the government's response to the slump in a report published in January.
Bank of Israel Governor Stanley Fischer said Israel's "conservative and closely supervised banking system" and the absence of mortgage-backed assets in capital markets had cushioned it from the worst of the global economic turmoil.
But there are still many challenges ahead.
By the OECD's definition, 20 percent of Israel's population of 7.6 million currently live below the poverty line -- more than in any member state.
And about 40 percent of people of working age have no jobs, compared to about 33 percent in OECD countries, the organisation reported in January.
This is largely due to cultural traditions among Israel's large Arab and ultra-Orthodox Jewish minorities -- each of which has low participation in the workforce but higher than average birthrates.
"All told, nearly half of children entering primary school belong to one or other of these communities," the OECD said.
"Israel will have to take action on a number of fronts including education, training, childcare, support for jobseekers and working conditions if it is to ensure these children do not inherit their parents? economic disadvantage," the OECD said.
Jerusalem's Taub Center for Social Policy Studies said the current trend must change, or Israel will find it hard to survive.
"In order for tomorrow's adults to be employed 30 years from now, then today's pupils need to receive an education befitting the needs of a modern economy," it said last week.
"This is not the situation today in Israel. The country's level of education in the core curriculum subjects is the lowest among advanced Western countries and among (ultra-Orthodox) and Israeli Arab pupils, it is even lower."
The centre's director, Daniel Ben-David said one benefit of OECD membership would be having to regularly supply economic data which would be published and compared with that of other members.
"It will hold a mirror up to our faces," he told AFP on Tuesday. "Reporters who watch these things will write about our performance and that will put pressure on our policymakers."
http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5ibPs4eOFMlsUQLuq28mOLm9tUvdA