Israel, along with America, ranks the top in terms of social inequality. In America, however, the inequality is fluid: most wealth is not inherited, and the list can change from generation to generation. In Israel, income distribution follows the oligarchic model: about twenty families concentrate half of the wealth. In America, income inequality is largely due to technological progress and market opportunities. Successful investors form the top 1% of earners while skilled professionals form the stable middle class. That’s not the case in Israel where riches are unrelated to investment acumen but depend on the close cooperation with government. Israel also lacks the middle class in the American sense of well-off people. In Israel, even skilled professionals barely make ends meet.
Western European socialist countries live off the centuries of accumulated welfare. Their income distribution is close to socialist model, but the rest of their economy is fairly free. They are spared the burden of military expenses. They don’t have a quarter of economically lackluster population. Israel is different in every one of those aspects.
Like the communists, Israel initially embraced socialist economic regulation because it furthers political totalitarianism. The leftist state, bent on eradicating Judaism, could not accept economically independent citizens who would eventually sponsor Jewish – the anti-government – purposes. Israel still retains a truly communist level of business regulation which stifles private initiative and puts businessmen at the government’s mercy – while they are loyal.
Elites are necessarily cosmopolitan. Every person comfortably cooperates with his equals. Most Israeli professionals can find friends of similar social standing in Israel. But the Israeli “elite” is too small to find fellows in the country. Big businessmen and politicians seek friends and contacts abroad. The owner of an Israeli international corporation or Israel’s foreign minister cannot really wear Jewish religious garb in London, nor could they make an argument of the Promised Land and Jewish chosen-ness to justify holding on to Jerusalem.
During the ages, Jewish “elite” was the most anti-Jewish force, closely cooperating with our enemies in the Judenrat fashion. Israel cannot survive as a Jewish state while the “elite” have political power. And in a democratic state, it always has such power. Worse, the power is also allotted to “artistic” opinion-makers: news anchors, brainless political commentators, actors and singers. In their search for artistic freedom they reject any bounds, including the bounds of Judaism and Jewish interests.
Davidic monarchy would be nice, but Israel’s only practical choice is administrative autonomy on the settlements’ level. Every community should have the right to determine and enforce its own rules: of schooling, public appearance, religiosity, etc. Such ghettoization can shield Jews from the assimilated “elite.” Think of Judea.
