The poverty spin

Today is your turn to take care of the after-school activities – the girl starts with ballet and from there continues to the scouts, while your boy, after finishing his extra-help classes in math, has to get to soccer practice.

Your wife is coming back from work late today, and on the way back has to stop by for acupuncture (because of her back problems.) Yet in the evening you still go out for some salsa dancing. During dinner you tell her that you found a new home with a backyard, at the price of an extra 15 minutes on the road in the morning and another 500 dollars per month in mortgage payments.

In short, you belong to the segment of people who have a happy family, work hard, and choose where they want to direct their lives. You are highly independent and are able to realize the rights given to you in a democratic, Western society.

Alternative poverty report offers new definition

This sounds almost trivial, but for hundreds of thousands of people and families this kind of lifestyle is a distant dream. Their independence has been taken away and they are collapsing under the burden in a survival war that makes them dependent on everyone: The National Insurance Institute, the Social Services, volunteer groups, family, friends and other good people, the Housing Ministry and various committees.

Many of them hold a temporary job, cannot meet rent and electricity payments, experience hunger, and at times are unable to offer their children basic nutrition required for proper development or the basic conditions needed to succeed at school.

At times they have no money for medicine, not to mention dental treatments. They live in a small apartment or are stuck in a neglected neighborhood, surrounded by drugs and violence, and are dependent on numerous sources. Do they have a chance to leave poverty behind?

Those who dismiss their own responsibility for this reality by saying that a culture of poverty has emerged in Israel and that aid organizations only serve to preserve the current situation fail to grasp the lifestyle forced on a quarter of Israel's citizens. The dependence on others, the loss of self-respect, the price inherent in the inability to take care of one's family, and the lowly confidence and despair all contradict human nature.

The vast majority of the poor are not dying of hunger because there are citizens who take care of them, but they are dying to win this terrible war, start taking care of themselves, and at least ensure a future that is not as grim for their children.

Regrettably, the government, which is not doing a thing, is detached from the public's genuine needs and is addicted to flawed priorities, opportunistic politics, and one-time acts aimed at serving as cosmetic manipulations regarding the poverty line. 

Seemingly, the National Insurance Institute's report for 2006 includes good news: The rise in the scope of poverty has been curbed. However, in the alternatively poverty report published for the fourth year we offer an alternative, innovative way for measuring poverty in Israel.

Beyond poverty's definition based on a quantitative index premised on one parameter, namely disposable income, the method is based on five qualitative parameters that combine to form a "basket" of basic rights that offer a dignified existence – employment, education, housing, health, and food.

The focus on services provided in these areas, in an effort to gradually regain independence in taking care of basic needs required by the needy population, could significantly minimize poverty rates within a few years. In order to do that, policy needs to be changed and poverty must become a top national priority. Simply put, we need to want this change.

The writer is a lawyer and directs the "Latet" aid organization