The State of Israeli Poor

The Fellowship  |  December 15, 2016

The Fellowship and our faithful friends continue to provide aid to the many impoverished who live in Israel. The Jerusalem Post’s Lidar Gravé-Lazi reports on a new survey done on the state of the Jewish state’s poor:

“Poverty is not just a matter of values, but a real threat to the resilience of Israeli society and its ability to sustain a society that is functioning and shows solidarity,” said Rabbi Yechiel Eckstein, founder and president of the IFCJ…

The respondents said the responsibility of taking care of the poor lies first and foremost with the entire government and then, in declining order of responsibility, with the prime minister, the finance minister, the labor and social services minister and the National Insurance Institute…

“The worrisome statistics and severity of poverty, alongside this survey, should be a wakeup call to the leaders of our country and its citizens,” said Eckstein. “It is time that the Israeli government declares an all-out war against poverty and handle the situation with the same determination and the same budgets which it allocates for dealing with external security threats…

“The Start-Up and Innovative Nation is capable, if it so desires, to minimize poverty and the gaps to a minimum and to stop wallowing at the bottom of the list of developed countries in everything related to social issues,” he said.