Skip Nav | Home | Mobile | Editorial Guidelines | Mission Statement | About Us | Contact | Help | Security | Support Us

World

Israel: One third of Holocaust survivors live in poverty

Bill Van Auken | 18.04.2007 17:48 | Palestine | World

Israel marked its annual Holocaust Remembrance Day Monday not only with the traditional wailing of air raid sirens, but also with protests over the government neglect and right-wing social policies that have left one-third of the country’s Holocaust survivors living in poverty, with little or no assistance.

A number of organizations, including the Israeli pensioners rights group Ken Lazaken, boycotted the official Holocaust Remembrance Day ceremonies to call attention to the plight of more than 80,000 survivors living below the poverty line, which in Israel is set at 2,000 shekels (486 dollars) a month for a single person.

Approximately 1,000 Holocaust survivors, students and others joined in a demonstration and “March of the Living” Monday that went from the Israeli Knesset to the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial, the site of the official proceedings, to protest these conditions.

Some of the protesters referred to “Israel’s denial of its Holocaust survivors.”

On the eve of the annual day of remembrance for the millions slaughtered by the Nazi regime, various government agencies and advocacy groups prepared reports spelling out the deepening poverty that tens of thousands of survivors confront in Israel.

According to figures presented by the National Insurance Institute and other Israeli agencies, out of the 250,000 Holocaust survivors living in Israel, 20,000 receive reparations from Germany and another 40,000 are paid stipends by the state. The overwhelming majority, however, receive no support whatsoever.

Thousands of the survivors die annually, with 70 percent of them older than 76, and 20 percent older than 86.

The state stipends themselves amount to barely $300 a month, not enough to pay for basic necessities. “Those fortunate enough to receive this meager sum must decide whether to buy food or get the medicine necessary for their survival,” said Colette Avital, a Member of the Knesset, who has advocated for Holocaust survivors.

“We keep being very critical of those people who have not admitted guilt or deny that there was a Holocaust, but here we are ignoring the people who are living in dire poverty,” Avital added.

“I feel deeply ashamed, the situation we’re faced with in terms of the conditions Holocaust survivors are living in is completely absurd,” Israeli Social Affairs Minister Isaac Herzog said on Sunday in response to the reports.

Under Israeli law, those survivors who arrived in Israel after 1953 are ineligible for government benefits. The Israeli government believes that a large share of the survivors living in poverty is made up of more recent immigrants from the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe.

Some of the Holocaust survivors themselves vented their anger at government callousness and neglect at a Knesset hearing held April 10, accusing government officials of deliberately humiliating those seeking medical care and other assistance.

Those survivors seeking disability benefits must go before a medical committee and prove that their disability stems from persecution by the Nazis.

The Israeli daily Haaretz quoted Tova Pedens as saying that state functionaries had urged her to feign insanity to improve her chances of getting state aid.

Abraham Berkowitz, a survivor who immigrated to Israel from Romania, came to a medical committee because of dental problems. The panel told him he could “receive money only for teeth he lost in the Holocaust.”

Rachel Biyale, another survivor, declared, “Hannah Arendt wrote of Adolf Eichmann’s Banality of Evil. The [Israeli] treasury adopts a banality of deception.”

In essence, the conditions confronting tens of thousands of Holocaust survivors reflect the deepening impoverishment of large sections of the Israeli population and growing social inequality resulting from Israel’s militarized economy and successive cuts to social spending.

A record 1.6 million Israelis—nearly a quarter of the population—now live below the poverty line. Child poverty is even worse, standing at 35.2 percent, worse than in any advanced capitalist country.

Government agencies recently reported that some 200,000 Israeli families—11 percent of the population—depend upon soup kitchens for their daily meals.

At the same time, government policies have generated substantially more wealth for Israel’s class of super rich, leading to an ever wider gap between wealth and poverty.

It is under these conditions that the plight of the impoverished Holocaust survivors has captured the attention of the Israeli public. The government and the political establishment as a whole are clearly apprehensive about the political implications of the exposure of the conditions facing this layer of Israeli society, whose fate has been invoked for decades as a principal justification for the creation of the Zionist state.

That they too are subjected to poverty and neglect can only contribute to the growing social and political discontent among broad layers of Israel’s working class.

Bill Van Auken
- Homepage: http://wsws.org/articles/2007/apr2007/holo-a18.shtml

Comments

Hide the following 2 comments

Shoah survivors forced back to Germany due to Israel's lack of restitution laws

18.04.2007 22:30

Documentary shows Israel worst place for Holocaust survivors to live throughout Western world. Hundreds protest outside Knesset, demand goverment help survivors with financial difficulties -- see:  http://www.normanfinkelstein.com/article.php?pg=3&ar=86

repost


Poverty is relative, the suffering is racial

18.04.2007 22:59

80,000 Israeli survivors of the Holocaust survive below the poverty line of $ 16 a day ?
That is astonishing given that Israel was founded on the their previous suffering.

What is more astonishing is that in 2002 1.25 million Palestinians lived on under $2.10 a day. Things have got worse nowadays to the point figures on Palestinian poverty aren't even gathered.
You'd think some of those impoverished Shoah victims should share their relative bounty with the new concentration camp victims.

In a state founded for the victims of religious persecution, persecution remains extrapolated from religion.

 http://www.reliefweb.int/rw/RWB.NSF/db900SID/OCHA-64D595?OpenDocument
 http://www.palestinemonitor.org/nueva_web/facts_sheets/poverty.htm

Daniel


Publish

Publish your news

Do you need help with publishing?

/regional publish include --> /regional search include -->

World Topics

Afghanistan
Analysis
Animal Liberation
Anti-Nuclear
Anti-militarism
Anti-racism
Bio-technology
Climate Chaos
Culture
Ecology
Education
Energy Crisis
Fracking
Free Spaces
Gender
Globalisation
Health
History
Indymedia
Iraq
Migration
Ocean Defence
Other Press
Palestine
Policing
Public sector cuts
Repression
Social Struggles
Technology
Terror War
Workers' Movements
Zapatista

Kollektives

Birmingham
Cambridge
Liverpool
London
Oxford
Sheffield
South Coast
Wales
World

Other UK IMCs
Bristol/South West
London
Northern Indymedia
Scotland

Server Appeal Radio Page Video Page Indymedia Cinema Offline Newsheet

secure Encrypted Page

You are viewing this page using an encrypted connection. If you bookmark this page or send its address in an email you might want to use the un-encrypted address of this page.

If you recieved a warning about an untrusted root certificate please install the CAcert root certificate, for more information see the security page.

IMCs


www.indymedia.org

Projects
print
radio
satellite tv
video

Africa

Europe
antwerpen
armenia
athens
austria
barcelona
belarus
belgium
belgrade
brussels
bulgaria
calabria
croatia
cyprus
emilia-romagna
estrecho / madiaq
galiza
germany
grenoble
hungary
ireland
istanbul
italy
la plana
liege
liguria
lille
linksunten
lombardia
madrid
malta
marseille
nantes
napoli
netherlands
northern england
nottingham imc
paris/île-de-france
patras
piemonte
poland
portugal
roma
romania
russia
sardegna
scotland
sverige
switzerland
torun
toscana
ukraine
united kingdom
valencia

Latin America
argentina
bolivia
chiapas
chile
chile sur
cmi brasil
cmi sucre
colombia
ecuador
mexico
peru
puerto rico
qollasuyu
rosario
santiago
tijuana
uruguay
valparaiso
venezuela

Oceania
aotearoa
brisbane
burma
darwin
jakarta
manila
melbourne
perth
qc
sydney

South Asia
india


United States
arizona
arkansas
asheville
atlanta
Austin
binghamton
boston
buffalo
chicago
cleveland
colorado
columbus
dc
hawaii
houston
hudson mohawk
kansas city
la
madison
maine
miami
michigan
milwaukee
minneapolis/st. paul
new hampshire
new jersey
new mexico
new orleans
north carolina
north texas
nyc
oklahoma
philadelphia
pittsburgh
portland
richmond
rochester
rogue valley
saint louis
san diego
san francisco
san francisco bay area
santa barbara
santa cruz, ca
sarasota
seattle
tampa bay
united states
urbana-champaign
vermont
western mass
worcester

West Asia
Armenia
Beirut
Israel
Palestine

Topics
biotech

Process
fbi/legal updates
mailing lists
process & imc docs
tech