ISRAELIS MARCH FEARS ECONOMIC COLLAPSE

Tel Aviv, 2 Rajab 1434/12 Apri 2013 (MINA) – Around 2,000 people gathered in central Tel Aviv to protest against an austerity budget due for cabinet debate on Monday (12/5). Their ire focused on finance minister Yair Lapid who came to power in January 2013 on the coattails of that protest movement.

The budget is expected to raise income tax and VAT while slashing government spending, including social benefits.

Rallies were also scheduled for Jerusalem, Haifa and elsewhere on Saturday (11/5), but local media reported just 150 taking part in Haifa and even fewer in Jerusalem.

Protesters in Tel Aviv carried banners reading “Take from the tycoons, not us,” referring to the plan to raise workers’ income tax by 1.5 percent while increasing corporate taxes by one point.

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Lapid insists that caution is needed in order not to drive employers abroad. Ma’an reported as monitored by Mi’raj News Agency (MINA).

“Who are you demonstrating against? Are your demonstrating so that you can lose your jobs, so that the economy will collapse? You are demonstrating against yourselves,” he said in an interview aired on Friday by privately owned Channel 2 television.

It was a reversal of roles for Lapid who tapped into middle class grievances to take his newly minted Yesh Atid party to striking success in its first ever election campaign, becoming the second-largest party in parliament and a partner in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s coalition government.

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The 2011 ago, protests saw record numbers of Israelis from all walks of life come together in unusual solidarity, when half a million people took to the streets.

Dailystar also reported that Three-quarters of Israelis see social and economic collapse in the Jewish state.

In its Alternative Poverty Report for 2012, it said poverty and social inequality were the main concerns of most Israelis, followed by education, with national security only in third place.

“Seventy-five percent of the general public believe that a socio-economic crash threatens Israel more than the Iranian threat,” said a summary of the report, which did not give numbers polled or a margin of error for its figures.