Sixtieth, Shmixtieth

Spending on Israel’s 60th anniversary — 100 million shekels — coming under attack amid country’s many problems.

Wrong note? Streisand may play the 60th celebration. Getty Images

by Michele Chabin
Israel Correspondent

Jerusalem — At a time when Jews the world over are planning events to celebrate Israel’s 60th anniversary celebrations in May, a small but growing number of Israelis are demanding that the Israeli government scale back its festivities and instead use the money to help ordinary citizens.

While Israeli expenditures for anniversary celebrations are relatively modest compared to the sums annually shelled out by other Westernized countries, social-minded Israelis have begun to ask whether the 100 million shekels, about $27 million, allocated for this year’s fireworks and events could be better spent on social welfare projects and tax relief.

Two Israeli educators, Ron Avni, the comptroller of Ben Gurion University, and Ze’ev Zahor, president of Sapir College, decided to create an online petition “to put

a stop to the spending of millions on celebrations” after receiving an unsigned letter circulating over the Internet about the 60th anniversary’s price tag.

Since its launch on Jan. 23, the petition has garnered nearly 20,000 signatures and, just in the past few days, quite a lot of local media attention and reader/viewer talkback.

According to the government’s anniversary Web site (www.israel60.gov.il, currently only in Hebrew), celebrations will include a multimedia music, laser and light show; events in public parks and flyovers by the Air Force, among other events. There will be at least two marches — a youth march to Jerusalem in the footsteps of the 1948 fighters and a march honoring Holocaust survivors and those who fought in the 1948 War of Independence. The world’s largest national flag will be unveiled in Eilat, and a satellite containing the 60th- anniversary logo will be launched into space.

Funds will also be earmarked for the refurbishing of 60 memorials honoring slain soldiers and of bike and hiking paths around the Sea of Galilee and between Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, according to the Web site.

Avni, who stressed that he and Zahor are acting independently of their respective schools, insists that the petition is not calling for the celebrations to be cancelled altogether.

“We’re simply asking the government to celebrate the 60th anniversary of the State of Israel as usual, as it does every other year, and to allocate the remainder of the 100 million shekels to infrastructure and welfare projects,” Avni told The Jewish Week.

Due to the country’s many problems, “we feel this is not the time for a special celebration or to be wasting money. There is too much poverty for that,” Avni said, referring to just-released figures showing that 40 percent of families living below the poverty line are actually headed by a wage earner. “There are Holocaust survivors whose needs aren’t being met.

There are the problems in Sderot.”

Avni and Zahor, whose college is located in Sderot, have come up with a novel use for the money they are pressing the government to reallocate: tax benefits for the beleaguered town.

“The idea is to cancel VAT in Sderot,” Avni said of the 15.5 percent Value Added Tax charged almost everywhere in the country on most consumer items. “Doing so will not only bring savings to Sderot residents. It will encourage people from the Western Negev to shop in Sderot,” helping businesses and raising morale.

Avni is convinced the petition, which has not yet been formally brought to the government, is already having an effect.

“Right after we shared our petition with the media, the government posted the official anniversary Web site and listed some infrastructure projects that will be included in the budget.

“The problem is,” he continued, “there are no details. They’re talking about refurbishing 60 monuments to fallen soldiers, but which ones? They’re talking about building 60 playgrounds in the periphery of the country. We want a list showing in exactly which places they’re slated to be built.”

By the end of the anniversary year, Avni said, “we want to see which promises were kept and which weren’t.”

Knesset Member Ruchama Avraham Balila, chairperson of the government’s 60th-anniversary committee, was abroad and could not be reached for comment. In an interview with The Jewish Week last December, she asserted that the goal of the yearlong effort was vital: “to transmit the message that we Jews represent one entity, one front.” The theme is the future, represented by children, and projects for them, from building six new “green” (environmentally friendly) schools in outlying areas to a medical conference dealing with juvenile diseases.

Though not yet a topic on the tongue of every citizen, the question of how much money should be spent to celebrate their country’s milestone is being debated over espresso, on op-ed pages and in Internet chat rooms.

The mass-circulation daily Yediot Achoronot has urged the government to spend the funds shoring up the National Library and State Archives.

“Acquiring pages that were torn from the Aleppo Codex or returning [writer] Yehuda Amichai’s archives from Harvard to Jerusalem will make Israelis happier than 100 stages of entertainment. Channeling the budget to such items is an appropriate way to assist in preserving the common memory, the loss of which will detrimentally affect independence and perhaps even jeopardize it,” the editorial said.

Tel Aviv financial adviser Laura Goldman said she would like to earmark the money to help Sderot, improve the National Library or to assist and honor Holocaust survivors.
“I’ve heard the anniversary is being dedicated the Year of the Child. It should have been the Year of Holocaust Survivors. It would have been a way to honor them for building us our country.”

One thing Goldman doesn’t want is the government spending millions of dollars flying in celebrities for the anniversary celebrations.

“I don’t’ think our image will be improved by having Barbra Streisand singing ‘Hatikva,’” Goldman said of the rumor that Streisand has been asked to participate in the celebrations.

Not everyone agrees that funding should to be diverted to other projects.

“With all due respect I wholeheartedly disagree with this petition,” said Amos Kamil, director of the North American Jewish federation system’s Israel Advocacy Initiative, which is based in New York. “We battle anti-Israel propaganda on campuses, through the media, the [Jewish Community Relations Councils], as well as with influential non-Jews.

“The opportunity to celebrate some of Israel at 60 both inside and outside the country is a breath of fresh air for community advocates who always seem to be on the defensive.”
Avni said he has no problem with diaspora Jews celebrating Israel’s 60th any way they see fit, but indicated their names would not be welcome on his petition.

“People who live abroad, they have no moral right to influence an opinion in Israel. This is an internal matter,” Avni said, “not for people outside Israel.”

Westchester Jewish Conference

Westchester’s Jewish Community Relations Organization