Mainly for my Israeli friends
Link in Hebrew and then a post in English with a few chosen translated quotes:
"סמוטריץ' ופורום קהלת יובילו למדינה של קליינטים מועדפים, כמו בסוריה ובירדן"
אביעד הומינר־רוזנבלום, חוקר בקרן ברל כצנלסון, ממפה את הנדוניה הכלכלית שסמוטריץ' מביא לממשלה החדשה, עם שוק חופשי פרוץ לחילונים ומדינת רווחה נוחה לדתיים
In Israel with this new government we are likely to have the unholy combination of right wing economic policies, imported from US via Kohelet Policy Forum, and welfare state for chosen groups (Haredi and national-religious Jews)
:
// The new government is supposed to bring to a peak the connection of the decision-makers in Israel with the Kohelet Forum, a research institute that has been working in recent years to promote right-wing and conservative policies in all avenues of society in Israel, on issues related to the economy, law and even culture.
The forum, which receives funding from libertarian American Jews, supports the annexation of the territories and opposes raising the minimum wage, and among other things has been accompanying right-wing politicians for several years, advising and actually outlining concrete steps. In the upcoming right-wing government, the forum is expected to be one of the policy dictators that influence it. In order to understand its general spirit, it is worth mentioning some of its position papers, which dealt with limiting the powers of the Attorney General, adding positions of trust for the sake of “increasing governance”, reducing support for academic courses that do not contribute to a salary advantage, adding difficulties for labor unions and opposing demonstrations during Corona.
…
While Bennett focused more on taxation, Smotrich chose to focus on the public sector and the workers’ committees. He wants to completely give up tenure for employees in the civil service, and he proposed to tax civil servants retroactively for not being taken out on sick leave during the Corona period.
…
he is also interested in reducing taxes, and in as much privatization as possible.
…
In other words, a free market that is broken and brutal for the secular - and next to it a padded welfare state for the religious and ultra-Orthodox.
The Ecclesiastical Forum doesn’t like this wording, but it really is. Smotrich needs Ecclesiastes to wink at liberal voters, and the privatization of education will allow him to take control of more centers of power. Religious-national education is already semi-privatized, and all the elites in this society study in private yeshiva , in ‘recognized unofficial’ education, which the state still budgets for, but in which they have more control over the content.”
What does all this mean for the country?
“This is actually a model of a clientist state - of favored clients. We like to compare Israel to European countries, trying to imitate their model, but in fact we are similar to countries in the Middle East - like in Syria they give more to the Alevis and in Jordan they give more to the tribe that is close to the king, the method is to give to whom who is close and whom you want to support you.”
Full article (in Hebrew, can be google-translated):
https://newmedia.calcalist.co.il/magazine-17-11-22/m02.html