Thursday April 29, 1999 / Iyar 13, 5759 - Day 28 of the Omer

The Likud and Labor parties have each used a good portion of their campaign advertising time so far to discuss the performance of the economy under Netanyahu. Each party quotes different points of the most recent report of the International Monetary Fund, in keeping with their respective positions. The Likud quotes the IMF prediction of a "rosy future should Netanyahu's policies be continued." Labor, on the other hand, cites the 67% decrease in overall economic growth and the 32% increase in unemployment. The Likud counters that such troubling figures merely "represent the price Israel must pay for its march towards privatization and a modern economy," according to the IMF report.

Arutz-7 economic affairs commentator Moti Meital agrees with the latter view: "The Netanyahu government was forced to reverse the policies of the previous Labor government, which funneled borrowed money into the economy and created the illusion of economic growth. But someone had to pay back those debts, and this led to short-range negative side-effects, such as the growth in unemployment." Regarding Labor's plan to redirect money from the hareidim to other uses, Meital said, "To Labor's credit, they sure know how to manipulate the truth. Let's take the case of the yeshiva students. The fact is that the sum total of monies provided for yeshiva students by the Likud was about the same as that by Labor - and for many more students! This means that Netanyahu actually lowered the amount of money paid to each student by almost 18%!"

Meital continued: "The kibbutzim were suffering from a 15-billion shekel debt in 1995. The Labor government first gave them a grant of 5 billion shekels, and refinanced 8 billion shekels of the remaining debt. But even this didn't help, so Labor cleared nearly the entire amount for them. This was equal to a grant of 150,000 shekels per person, from infant to senior citizen, over one year! With the grants to yeshiva students, Netanyahu is funding the religious population - at least ten times larger than the kibbutz population - to the tune of 2.8 billion shekels per year. In contrast, the 100,000 members of the kibbutzim received almost 15 billion shekels from Labor in 1995-96."