04-01 Internal Unity

My Jewish grandfather, who was orthodox (whatever that means), was always telling me not to mix meat with dairy. Apparently, this is Jewish law and has its origins from something in Exodus in the Old Testament, where it states that you “can’t boil a goat in its mother’s milk”. Now his wife, my grandmother, was a bit of an atheist and yet tried to honour her husband’s eating rules.
Although, when I went over to visit and enjoy a corn beef sandwich, I noticed a kind of family compromise with my grandmother putting milk in her tea, with grandfather drinking his tea clear. Neither of them ate pork, which is non-kosher, like eating camel.
Well when you visit Israel, and you discover that 10 per cent of the population is ultra-orthodox, or Haredi Jews, they make my grandfather look like a religious moderate.
The photo is of seriously orthodox Jewish people who can be identified in any major city of the world. I saw them throw stones at people driving cars on Saturday in Jerusalem.
But to a serious observer of Israel, they present a difficult problem. They do not serve in the military. They do not actively engage in the economy. And like all orthodox religions, they believe women are in this world to have babies, not engage in politics or economics.
And they are a class of Israeli society that is relatively poor. Of course, they have their own political parties, with 13 seats in the 120 seat Israel parliament. The result is a conservative coalition party in power with the ultra-orthodox parties that has become seriously right-wing and nationalistic.
The shock to me visiting Israel in 1995 was discovering that about 30 per cent of Israel society does not participate in the military and that includes Israeli Arabs as well as ultra-orthodox Jews.
And with these groups having the children, the scary projection is that by 2050, they will represent 60 per cent of the population.
The old rule in studying geopolitics is demographics, demographics, demographics. Israel has an internal problem, as dangerous as any outside security threat.
At the International Small Business Congress held in Tel Aviv in 1995, we heard about all the old problems of small firms facing high taxes and excessive regulations. And, of course, all of them complained about being unable to receive adequate financing. Typical problems as an economy evolves.
But the high costs of housing in Israel was and is a challenge that seems impossible to solve. At the time of the Congress, Israel was trying to absorb something like a million Russian immigrants.
One speaker suggested that if Israel is not able to deal with its high cost of living, young people will be forced to leave Israel for places like Canada or the US.
The good news is that invading armies are no longer the significant Israeli threat and the kinds of people they are looking for in the Israeli Defense Forces or IDF are highly educated and sophisticated young people interested in things like ballistic missile defence and cyber warfare.
So, this means less money for the military and more money for things like housing and consumer goods. Good luck to the people of Israel solving one problem after another.