Such punishment was only hypothetical anyway, but at least it provided some illusion of justice. Now the government has granted de facto work permits to all African illegals. In this theater of absurd, we extend more lenient treatment to Africans—who are most unwelcome here for economic, cultural, and health reasons—than to Asian and Eastern European immigrants who generally behave well, pose little or no threat to public order, have useful labor skills, and bring no HIV into the country.

The government pretends that these Africans are refugees, even though it is widely known that they pay large sums of money to the Bedouin traffickers who smuggle them into our country, which makes it obvious that they are economic migrants.

Following an uncharacteristically sensible intervention by the Histadrut, the government agreed to compensate both public and private employees for lost wages instead of pretending that they took vacation to spend it with their families under fire.

First, assistants conduct more than half of all lectures. That makes one wonder what the ‘normal’ teachers do, and how that kind of teaching reflects on the pitiful quality of education. Also, why are the assistants not made into tenured teachers if they are doing so much work? The answer, of course, is that the Histadrut shields its existing members, professors, from competition.

Second, professors get about $150 an hour, which sounds grossly unreasonable given the level of wages in Israel.

Such demands cross the line into racketeering: the trade-unionists not only demand better working conditions for themselves, but threaten sanctions if the job is given to others.

So why the fuss? Because by including government agencies’ contract employees in trade union agreements, Histadrut adds close to a hundred thousand workers and their families to its power base.

Netanyahu praised the agreement as ‘just,’ though of course it is not; it merely reflects Histadrut’s monopolistic bargaining power.

As usual, the government will eventually give in. Which raises the question, what are the limits of the trade union’s influence? Being a monopoly, they can naturally extort virtually anything from the government, so there is no theoretical limit to their demands.

But our socialist government refuses to take the only step needed to solve the crisis: subject trade unions to the same anti-monopoly laws that govern the rest of the country.

When the system was launched yesterday, a full 40  percent of doctors refused to use it. They chose to forgo overtime payments in order to hide the time they spend away from their hospitals.