A strike by the local governments, which employ many kindergarten staff, forced tens of thousands of Israeli parents to take Dec. 21 off work to look after their kids. The Union of Local Authorities in Israel took this extreme step to protest planned cuts in the budgets of already strapped local governments in socio-economically disadvantaged towns. In a letter to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the union warned that a planned 230 million-shekel ($60 million) cut in the budget of the Interior Ministry, which funds local governments, would result in the collapse of some of these weak municipalities in Israel’s “social and geographic periphery” and directly affect the services they provide to local residents. The cut stems from a Dec. 18 government decision to slash 1.25%, or 1.2 billion shekels ($313 million), across the board from its annual spending over the next two years, including on health, welfare and education services.
It gets better. Israel’s National Insurance Institute informed the people of Israel that their state had retained its top spot on the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development’s poverty and inequality scale. The body's annual report indicates that the poverty rate among Israeli families increased from 18.8% in 2014 to 19.1% last year. One of every five families in Israel lives below the poverty line of 3,158 (shekels $825) a month per capita. The poverty rate is particularly high among the elderly. This situation, compounded by skyrocketing housing prices, also hurts the middle class.