YESHA Represents a No Cost Ceiling

My Right Word

On the issue of the attempts by anti-Zionist radical forces as well as B'tselem, New Israel Fund, Peace Now and Haaretz to push the current protests/demos/rallies/assemblies/tent city phenomenon in Israel - J14 - in the direction of the supposed link between economic hardship and the YESHA communities, EOZ points out:
if the anti-Zionist left would get their way and a half million Jews were ethnically cleansed from their homes, it would cost hundreds of billions of dollars - money that every Israeli taxpayer would have to pay! [America, too, actually mostly] It cost about $2 billion to remove a few thousand Jews from Gaza...the cost of..."social justice" would be a huge burden on the Israeli economy, making the chances of affordable housing in Israel much more remote...


A point I have been making, too.

In Dr. Aaron Lerner's Weekly Commentary, I found that there are false savings if the YESHA communities are harmed and that

"Slashing funding today for the settlements won’t help achieve the “social justice” goals.

That’s because the operative questions is not if Israel spent a bazillion dollars on the settlements in the past but how a change in funding today would impact the situation in Israel. The first and foremost “social justice” problem is affordable housing. And it is going to take several years – in the most optimistic scenarios – for housing construction within the Green Line to close the supply gap that has pushed prices up beyond the reach of many families.

Any policy decision that encourages families to move from the settlements to communities within the Green Line would only exacerbate the existing shortages – making it take that much longer for supply to catch up with demand."


The huge profits being made in industry - food, etc., - have nothing to do with YESHA. And YESHA families share the economic burden of health, educational and other necessary services.

Not only that, but moving to YESHA would alleviate financial pressures on young families (see I Harel below).

The issue of YESHA does include persons those seeking a better economic lifestyle, one also cheaper, but it is still a matter of Zionist patriotism, of assuring Israel's lomng-term security and protecting the values of the patrimony. And this is still a middle-class protest in the main, let's not ignore.

That matter, the national responsibility concern bound up with YESHA, has no cost ceiling on it.

The value of those goals are worthy paying for.