Thousands Rally for ‘Israeli New Deal’
The leaders of last summer’s cost-of-living protest have joined forces with members of the business community and academia to put together a social justice covenant.
The document features two basic principles: the elimination of inequality and poverty and gradual increases in the state budget “to get the wheels of development moving for all the country’s citizens.”
Signatories include protest leader Stav Shaffir and Histadrut labor federation chief Ofer Eini, as well as professors Yossi Yonah and Avia Spivak, who have advised the protest movement.
The covenant calls for an improvement in living standards and the environment, and seeks upgraded public services. It proposes an increase in the government’s share of gross domestic product, and greater “access to services [providing] health, education, housing, social welfare, personal safety and transportation.” It also wants to eliminate gaps between the center of the country and outlying areas, and to greatly increase the public housing stock.
“[Last] summer’s protest put key problems on the agenda such as the distribution of capital, earning a livelihood and social justice,” said Uri Matoki of the umbrella group Forum for Social Justice.
For more, go to Haaretz.com
A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.
If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.
Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO