JERUSALEM (VINnews) — The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) on Tuesday warned Israel to halt its subsidies for yeshiva students while at the same time increasing funding for Arab schools, according to a Haaretz report.
Join our WhatsApp groupSubscribe to our Daily Roundup Email
The OECD report follows steps by Israel’s finance minister Betzalel Smotrich to increase funding to charedi yeshivot while at the same time delaying and reducing the development and education budgets for the Arab sector.
The OECD report generally advises member countries on how to bring about maximum growth, and includes individual recommendations to each country. The organization warned that charedim and Arabs are underrepresented in the high-tech sector and their employment rates are low, as are the scope of their working hours and wages.
To solve this issue, the OECD recommended the removal of yeshiva subsidies and conditioning the provision of day care services on workforce participation, as had been suggested by former finance minister Avigdor Liberman.
Israeli economists have warned that Netanyahu’s decision to increase stipends for yeshiva students while awarding massive subsidies to charedi schools which do not offer the core curriculum could hasten Israel’s deterioration into a Third World country.
The OECD also recommended adding to budgets of Arab local authorities and schools in order to improve their workforce participation.
In July, Smotrich had decided to freeze municipal budgets to Arab communities, calling the funding of local authorities “a bribe” by Arab MK Mansour Abbas during the previous government’s tenure. Since Smotrich’s decision, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Interior Minister Moshe Arbel have urged Smotrich to unfreeze the funds.
The OECD on Tuesday also warned that Israel was developing into a dual-track economy consisting of the hi-tech sector, on the one hand, and everyone else on the other, with most economic gains being made by the expansion of technology while workers in other industries lagged behind.
The organization also criticized Israel’s gender gap and recommended that Israel lower barriers to imports.
Figures published by the OECD in August showed price levels in Israel were 38 percent higher than the OECD average. The cost of living began to sharply rise in Israel in 2009, when price levels were still similar to other OECD countries. That year, Netanyahu was elected to his second term in office, after his first term in the 1990s.
Here is a suggestion that of course Judith will hate: Offer gender segregated college courses that only teach subjects that are vital for the job and not against our faith. Just like PCS in the USA. And allow businesses like B&H that are gender segregated to open as well. Give charedim jobs that abide by their customs. This is the way you solve poverty and end the never ending issue of charedim not working or contibuting monetarily to society
Obviously any secular organization will make this suggestion b/c in the absence of all other factors, it makes economic sense. Still not going to happen.
Excellent suggestion. That way the “Jewish” State can totally eradicate any semblance of a connection with HaShem and Torah. Surely we all know that the “new Jew” envisioned by Zionism has nothing to do with HaShem and Torah. It’s all about being like the other nations. Barukh HaShem that Herzl’s and Ben-Gurion’s vision will now be realized.
But I wonder what the “Mizrachi” “Religious Zionists” will do if and/or when they finally realize they were duped and have been engaging in Avodah Zara for 75 years.