The Democratic takeover of the House in the US Congressional elections was a crushing blow to Trump and the Republican Party. It raised a new alternative agenda for America called “A Green New Deal.” Promoting this is 29-year-old Alexandria…
Category: Economy
Teva: Between Zionism and reality
Teva, a pharmaceutical company that started in Israel and went global, is collapsing and threatening to cut thousands of jobs here and abroad. Israel’s Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, is attempting to intervene in this decision to save the plants in…
Lapid’s war against the workers
Yair Lapid had hardly settled into his Knesset seat before the Finance Ministry declared war on the ultra-Orthodox, on the Histadrut, on the monopolies – in short, a world war. What the father Tommy began with Netanyahu in 2003, the…
“It Can’t Happen Here”: Israel and the Global Financial Crisis
The world’s credit markets are clogged, a situation unprecedented in the capitalist era. And what about Tel Aviv? The captains of Israel’s economy soothe the public: our banks are not “exposed” to the same degree as America’s. But will the…
Incarceration for Profit
Prison Privatization in Israel In Israel’s desert town of Beersheva, far from the eyes of the country’s self-proclaimed center, a new 800-bed jail is being built as an experiment in prison privatization. While other nations are having second thoughts about…
Roots of the Neoliberal Takeover in Israel
It is customary to define globalization with a view to the threefold mobility of commodities, labor and capital, a mobility that diminishes the capacity of nation-states to protect economic borders. When the proponents of globalization want to emphasize that it…
The Price of Olive Oil
ABU AL-ABED COULD not believe his eyes when he went down to his olive grove in the Deir Hana Valley. It was early November, but the trees were naked of fruit, as if they’d forgotten that it was harvest time…
Interview with Dr. John Gal
Michal Freedman interviews Dr. John Gal Dr. John Gal is a Senior Lecturer at the School of Social Work in the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He was a member of the Tamir Committee, which in 2002 made recommendations for implementing…
Reforms versus Organized Labor
AFTER CUTTING INTO the living flesh of the jobless, the physically challenged, children and the elderly, and after trampling organized labor, the Israeli government in 2007 wakes up to discover that there is poverty in the land. One fourth of…
Netanyahu Redux
AMID THE SHOCK of the Lebanon War in August, it was clear to Israelis that changes would be needed in the budget for 2007. Pictures poured in showing the plight of the poor, left to their own devices beneath Hezbollah’s…