Nearly 900,000 Israelis Go Without Food Due to Poverty, Government Says
Image by Getty Images
Some 894,000 Israelis go for an entire day without food or eat smaller meals because they cannot afford to buy food, according to a government report.
The State Comptroller’s Nutritional Insecurity report issued Monday found that 306,000 of those who go hungry are children. In addition, nearly 50 percent of the Israeli-Arab population cannot meet minimal nutritional needs.
The report blamed the government for transferring the responsibility for the problem to charitable organizations instead of meeting it head-on, according to Israeli media reports.
“The heart breaks when you read about a family with children whose refrigerator is empty, or about a family who hasn’t bought fruits and vegetables because of financial difficulties,” Israel’s State Comptroller Yosef Shapira said. “The responsibility for the lack of food security falls on the government that left the treatment of this problem in the hands of charity organizations. Poverty is not the result of fate.”
The report covered the time period of February 2013 to August 2013.
The Forward is free to read, but it isn’t free to produce
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward.
At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse.
Readers like you make it all possible. We’ve started our Passover Fundraising Drive, and we need 1,800 readers like you to step up to support the Forward by April 21. Members of the Forward board are even matching the first 1,000 gifts, up to $70,000.
This is a great time to support independent Jewish journalism, because every dollar goes twice as far.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
2X match on all Passover gifts!
Dive In
-
Fast Forward Just 1 Jewish coach still in NCAA title contention as Todd Golden’s Florida faces Houston in men’s basketball final
-
Fast Forward Breakthrough Prize winner Dennis Gaitsgory is planning to attend a protest in Israel
-
Fast Forward Netanyahu in Washington again to meet with Trump to discuss tariffs, Gaza
-
Fast Forward He called a Nazi sympathizer ‘extraordinary.’ Now he’s a nominee for U.S. attorney.
Most Popular
In Case You Missed It
-
Food This Passover, try a big, glorious spring salad for the karpas
-
Fast Forward Just 1 Jewish coach still in NCAA title contention as Todd Golden’s Florida faces Houston in men’s basketball final
-
Fast Forward Breakthrough Prize winner Dennis Gaitsgory is planning to attend a protest in Israel
-
Fast Forward Netanyahu in Washington again to meet with Trump to discuss tariffs, Gaza
-
Shop the Forward Store
100% of profits support our journalism
Republish This Story
Please read before republishing
We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines.
You must comply with the following:
- Credit the Forward
- Retain our pixel
- Preserve our canonical link in Google search
- Add a noindex tag in Google search
See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.
To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.