“Justice” — Social

THE UNDERLYING AGENDA OF ECONOMIC PROTESTERS IN ISRAEL

For more than a decade Israeli high school students have been at or near the bottom of international tests for math and reading comprehension. The current round of “social justice” protests demonstrates that the failure to read or to comprehend what one reads can have real-world consequences. About a month ago university students began pitching their tents on Tel Aviv’s upscale Rothschild Street and demanding that the government somehow provide housing at rents they deem adequate in their favorite North Tel Aviv neighborhoods.

Since then the “social justice” protests fanned by the media have grown precipitously and so has the “wish list” of demands — which now includes such things as free day care and state-provided housing. Oh and they also want the government to do this while dramatically lowering taxes. Perhaps the protestors forgot that Israel does not have the luxury of Western Europe of foregoing defense spending unless the students wish to trust in the tender mercies of Ahmadinejad and our immediate neighbors.

Apparently Israel’s best and brightest have not read about the demise of European social welfare model or about the United States’s recent flirtation with bankruptcy. The process of transforming “goods” — medical care education day care housing six-week vacations — into “rights” has left the European euro on the verge of extinction.