Hide Your Wallet When You See A ‘Caring Leftist’

By: Steven Plaut

Published: July 11th, 2003

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I have long believed that the one time the Left is even more dangerous than when it is pursuing “peace” is when it suddenly gets all caring-pooh about the underprivileged. When leftists decide to go on a jihad against inequality, the time has come to hide your wallet and take
a long sabbatical in New Zealand.

Israel’s Caring Left has long insisted that the national budget must first and foremost be earmarked for helping out all those who would like a handout, and only when there are absolutely no cases of people unhappy with their material comforts and standards of living will we check if there is any cash left over in the till that can be used for national defense.

As a result of leftist agitprop, Israel has practically disarmed itself over the past decade, what with the Oslo Accords being so successful and all. Real spending on defense as a portion of
GDP is less than half of what it was before Oslo. Meanwhile, social welfare spending has gone through the roof. But the Israeli Left echoes the famous American labor union chief who, when
asked what exactly he wanted, responded, “More!”

As a result of the Oslo War Process and the world recession, Israel’s economy is in dire
straits and tax revenue is down. This means either the country shoots back into hyperinflation or the budget has to get cut. Cutting the budget pretty much means cutting some segments of social welfare spending, because that is most of what constitutes the budget, and any further cuts in the already-halved defense budget are a guaranteed one-way ticket to the concentration camps.

There are, of course, plenty of places to cut social spending and lots of pork. Instead, the
Left suggests raising taxes on the “rich” to, say, 110% of income. Guess how much new revenue that would bring in.

So the Caring Left took to the streets to demand that no social spending at all be cut.

Cutting social spending makes leftists feel sad. Spending other people’s money makes them feel happy. Since the average leftist has maybe five times the income and wealth of the average
Israeli, nothing is stopping Caring Leftists from helping out the poor through tzedaka (charity)
except their own hypocrisy.

The Histadrut Crime Family has exploited all these sentiments, shutting down the country
repeatedly in recent weeks in the name of preventing social spending cuts. Israeli businesses are losing contracts because foreign businessmen are afraid to enter the country - not because of the Oslo bloodbath, but for fear of being stranded when the Histadrut next decides to shut down the airport.

The Histadrut is itself in large part responsible for the stampeding social spending, because a good chunk of public spending is being used to bail out the Histadrut’s own insolvent pension funds. For years, the Histadrut ran its pension funds under the guiding principle that for every shekel you put in, we promise you four shekels plus interest, and then when we cannot pay
you what we promised, we will extort the government into ponying up the missing wampum and robbing the taxpayer.

This spring, the Histadrut was joined by a number of academic leftists who signed public
petitions endorsing the Histadrut?s “campaign” and its extortionate strikes. These were the same people who were among the early promoters of Oslo.

Finally, the newest cause of the Left is using suicides as a fig leaf to force the government
not to cut any social spending ? indeed, to expand it. It seems the Left has decided that all cases of suicide in recent months were due to the fact that the economy is doing poorly and some people are in financial distress. The ?proof? is that in some cases those who took their own lives were sad or left notes saying woe is me, etc.

(Following the Left’s twisted logic, no one ever commits suicide when the economy is doing well; half the population must have committed suicide back when Israel was poor and undeveloped; India is darned near empty these days due to the ‘fact’ that poverty produces
suicide.)

So the Knesset is considering new measures to stop Israeli suicides by pumping more money into social spending and handouts, and the Court is considering legal petitions by people
demanding Court-ordered increases in social spending to stop suicides, while the press is filled
with stories about suicides caused by economic hardship.

Steven Plaut is a professor at Haifa University. His book ‘The Scout’ is available at
Amazon.com. He can be contacted at steven_plaut@yahoo.com