Four papers discuss various issues related to the ongoing protest over housing prices and the plan that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu presented yesterday:
Ma’ariv suggests that „For those with patience, it may be said that the Prime Minister offered a package of reasonable benefits to those without housing and students.” The paper reminds its readers that „Netanyahu even received Bank of Israel Governor Stanley Fischer’s blessing,” and points out that „Knesset elections are due to be held in another two years. If the plan to market cheaper housing is actually implemented, then the price that the Government will pay at the ballot box for the current wave of protests will be relatively low.”
Yisrael Hayom asks „How is it that Benjamin Netanyahu identified the severe housing plight of the middle class 2.5 years ago but sprang into tangible action – if indeed it is implemented – only under pressure from the protest encampments, which have sprung up around the country like mushrooms after a rain?” The author also calls on the protest leaders to openly admit that many of them simply want to topple the current Government regardless of what it does. The paper urges the Prime Minister and his economic ministers to busy themselves with putting the plan into practice and asserts that „Netanyahu should let the demonstrations take place and let the tent dwellers sleep in city squares, and concentrate solely on the work of building the apartments quickly because verbal sparring matches will not contribute anything.”
The Jerusalem Post welcomes the government’s attempts to address the chronic market failures afflicting our housing sector, and states: “This government, buoyed by popular demand for change, has taken significant steps to tackle the crisis. If the government’s many detractors think they can do a better job, they should offer real alternatives instead of resorting to empty populist slogans articulating nothing more than inchoate discontent.”
Haaretz states that “Netanyahu’s plans for addressing the housing crisis will not lower the price of housing for all,” and opines that in order to do so, two significant changes must be made: reforming the Israel Land Authority and establishing national housing committees. The editor adds: “If they are implemented, the supply of land will increase. And then there will be a real drop in housing prices for the entire public.”
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Yediot Aharonot regrets that the Israel Chamber Orchestra chose to play Wagner in Germany earlier this week. The author, a survivor of Auschwitz, notes that „ICO Chairwoman Erella Talmi said, in an interview, that one must separate music and politics. For Ms. Talmi, the six million Jews who were murdered are ‘politics.’ Ms. Talmi also said that one had to separate Wagner the musical genius from Wagner the man. In that case, I propose that we hold in Israel an exhibition of the works of an Austrian painter named Adolf Hitler – and let us also separate between the artist and the man.”
