Shlomo Mor-Yosef, the director-general of Bituach Leumi (National Insurance Institute) addressed the eighth annual Hamodia Conference in the Jerusalem Convention Center on Tuesday, 24 Tammuz 5773. Following is a synopsis of his remarks.
“Monthly child allowance payments do not extricate one from poverty. A job breaks this cycle, however to blame the monthly payments for all the state’s economic woes is not logical and unacceptable.”
He added the funds required for the monthly payments are not astronomical, and “the child payments are not a chareidi invention… Anyone stating otherwise is duping the public.”
“Children are a national asset, not a burden as others say. The children are the most precious national asset and the job of parents is to raise them. The job of the government is to assist the parents in this task. As we assist with education by providing a long school day and a hot lunch, and this too is the job of parents, but the state assists.
(YWN – Israel Desk, Jerusalem)
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2 Responses
A similar situation occured (occurs?) in the USA when many people who hated blacks attacked welfare in the incorrect belief that most welfare recipients were black. Many Israelis hate hareidim, and since they realize that many hareidim qualify for child allowances (since hareidim, unlike hilonim, value children and produce them), they are opposing child allowance.
The irony of this, is that secular Jews are the group of Israelis most likely to to cut back on having children due to the loss of child allowances. But then again, people motivated by bigotry are rarely rational.
“ד’ ילחם לכם ואתם תחרישון”