Seeing that coverage and analysis of the inept Israeli leadership has been written to death, the times call for constructive thinking. Therefore, the question to be asked is how on earth the State of Israel keeps functioning?
With a prime minister, treasurer, justice minister and president under police investigations, a defense minister out of sorts and a Tax Authority chief in handcuffs, Israel continues to turn on its daily orbit relatively unfazed.
Fending off terrorist activity, collecting tax revenue, signing big-deal businesses, even enforcing some of its laws, the question need be asked: How and thanks to whom?
Despite the inevitable Marxist overtones, I believe that the answer lies with the dictionary definition of the term Middle Class.
Under this entry, we find the people who are intermediaries between aristocracy and the poor. Those who go to work, earn a day's pay, and go home to lead an 'ordinary life.' And it is this behavioral pattern of getting up for work, doing one's job, and maintaining an equitable family life, which is saving this country right now.
It is the Middle Class-minded individuals across all sectors, business, civil service and armed forces alike, who just keep at what they were assigned to do, who care not for easy money or dirty-shortcuts-obtained-at-a-handshake-under-bridges-late-at-night, who are the backbone of this country.
This is not a cliché, certainly not at a time when the golden calf is standing erect at the main square of every major city; when the only happiness/success index is one's net worth and gross investments; when one's house and car stand for one's social persona.
Despite this pervasive mentality, there are enough people in a sufficient number of key positions who care the most about getting their job done. It is those individuals who are keeping Israel intact as a network of mutually-inclusive checks and balances.
The only problem with this idyllic picture of decent-folk-working-shoulder-to-shoulder-to-save-the-country, is that their life is being made more and more impossible.
Oodles have been written on the unfair tax system, on the absence of incentives for bright young people to stay here, on the deteriorating education system, the hapless and helpless police force that leaves civilians to their own device facing violent crime.
Having at least one question answered – who is keeping Israel on its orbit – the next quandary now hangs in the air: How can the impossibility of being part of the Middle Class be dissolved?
This is yet to be discerned. The sooner – the better for us all.
With a prime minister, treasurer, justice minister and president under police investigations, a defense minister out of sorts and a Tax Authority chief in handcuffs, Israel continues to turn on its daily orbit relatively unfazed.
Fending off terrorist activity, collecting tax revenue, signing big-deal businesses, even enforcing some of its laws, the question need be asked: How and thanks to whom?
Despite the inevitable Marxist overtones, I believe that the answer lies with the dictionary definition of the term Middle Class.
Under this entry, we find the people who are intermediaries between aristocracy and the poor. Those who go to work, earn a day's pay, and go home to lead an 'ordinary life.' And it is this behavioral pattern of getting up for work, doing one's job, and maintaining an equitable family life, which is saving this country right now.
It is the Middle Class-minded individuals across all sectors, business, civil service and armed forces alike, who just keep at what they were assigned to do, who care not for easy money or dirty-shortcuts-obtained-at-a-handshake-under-bridges-late-at-night, who are the backbone of this country.
This is not a cliché, certainly not at a time when the golden calf is standing erect at the main square of every major city; when the only happiness/success index is one's net worth and gross investments; when one's house and car stand for one's social persona.
Despite this pervasive mentality, there are enough people in a sufficient number of key positions who care the most about getting their job done. It is those individuals who are keeping Israel intact as a network of mutually-inclusive checks and balances.
The only problem with this idyllic picture of decent-folk-working-shoulder-to-shoulder-to-save-the-country, is that their life is being made more and more impossible.
Oodles have been written on the unfair tax system, on the absence of incentives for bright young people to stay here, on the deteriorating education system, the hapless and helpless police force that leaves civilians to their own device facing violent crime.
Having at least one question answered – who is keeping Israel on its orbit – the next quandary now hangs in the air: How can the impossibility of being part of the Middle Class be dissolved?
This is yet to be discerned. The sooner – the better for us all.
posted by Orr at 1:13 pm
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