Last week the NGO “Pitgon Lev” (Open Heart) sent 120 empty food baskets to the members of the Israeli Knesset, to remind them that in Israel, still, people are going hungry and approximately 2.3 million Israelis do not know where their next meal will come from and one in every three Israeli children goes to sleep at night, hungry.
With another election coming up, Knesset members and potential members are vying for the attention of the public and bringing up a variety of issues that are believed or are supposed to be important to Israelis. But hunger is not one of them. The million hungry children are not being heard not being seen and not being cared about. They don’t vote and probably neither do their parents so why should a politician care.
It is way more important to talk about Iran, the Palestinians, Hamas. The environment deserves the attention of our politicians. The cost of living is brought forward as crucial. Netanyahu is still important to the public. The participation of Israeli Arabs in government is heatedly discussed. But the politicians do not realize, or do not want to acknowledge that their collective failure is, in a State that is considered a high-income State, the “Start Up” nation, that poverty is still one of the most serious but carefully hidden problems.
But it is not surprising when considering the income a regular Knesset member has. He receives a monthly salary of approx. NIS 45,000 (about $ 13,000). In comparison, the average salary in Israel currently stands at about NIS 11,500 ($ 3,600), while the old-age benefits stand at approx. NIS 2,000 ($ 675). A Knesset member simply doesn’t realize that for a job like his, with additional benefits like a full pension after two terms, a car, a PR budget, and who knows what else, while having to work barely three days a week and long (paid) parliament recesses, there are still people in this country who need to work for their daily bread, often work very hard and still have problems making ends meet.
Food insecurity is worst in some sectors of the Israeli population, such as Haredim, Arabs, single mothers and the elderly and while some of these groups such as the Haredim, are accustomed to receiving food baskets from Pitgon Lev and other NGOs and prefer to spend their time doing more important things (in their eyes) than working, others simply are not able to generate sufficient income to provide for themselves. A sad example is the dwindling population of Holocaust survivors who every year are placed in the spotlight on Holocaust Remembrance Day, because they have to choose between buying medicine or food, or how they spend all day in bed during the winter months because there is no money to by fuel to warm the house. With such stories in the news, the Knesset always pays lip service to the demands to solve these problems, but two days later they have totally forgotten (and so has, sadly, also the more affluent Israeli population).
What members of Parliament do not realize is the simple fact that if you are hungry, the Iranian threat is not really relevant anymore. Another war in the Gaza strip doesn’t alleviate the empty feeling in your stomach, and the climate change does not help to feed your children so you don’t have to send them to bed hungry. The problems of the world and of Israel do not make an impression on you when you have nothing to put on your plate or your children’s plate.
Politicians need to be reminded that they represent the people (those who are hungry and those who are not) and, while Iran is a serious problem, their first responsibility is towards the people. And indeed this includes all people. Those that can afford to think about Iran and its threat, and those that are too busy with the question of how to feed their children.
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