2003-04-18-Admiral Ben Shoshan
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Israeli admiral warns of a capsized economy San Diego Jewish
Press-Heritage, April 18, 2003
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2003-04-18-Admiral Ben Shoshan |
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By Donald H. Harrison SAN DIEGO—A former commander-in-chief of the Israeli Navy recently told San Diegans that a major job after the war will be reconstruction of the economy. No, Adm. Abraham Ben Shoshan wasn't talking about the war in Iraq. He was referring to the war against Israel known as the Palestinian intifada. Ben Shoshan, who was the top man in the Israeli Navy from 1985 to 1989 and later served as a military attache at Israel's embassy in Washington, recently was appointed by Tel Aviv's Mayor Ron Huldai to serve as executive director of the Tel Aviv Foundation. The foundation is a nonprofit organization that raises funds for projects and programs within the municipality. That was what brought him to San Diego for several days of meetings with philanthropists, Jewish communal workers and local news media. While here, he also renewed social ties with some retired U.S. Navy personnel. Among his meetings was one held April 2 in the La Jolla home of Heritage columnist Gert Thaler. Ben Shoshan described the economic situation in Israel as "tough, very tough." In 1992, when Israel was absorbing large waves of immigrants from the former Soviet Union and national unemployment was at 11.2 percent, the unemployment figure in Tel Aviv was only 3 percent, he said. Now, in Tel Aviv alone, unemployment stands at 10.5 percent. "When you look around Tel Aviv now, the hotels are empty— 7 percent of capacity," he said. There have been massive layoffs in other industries, such as high-tech. "It is unbelievable. ... One of every three children in Israel is under the poverty line, which means they need help, which means that you have to feed them. In Tel Aviv alone, we used to feed 1,000 kids per day a year ago. Now it is between 7,000 and 8,000 kids per day. The families are finding it very hard to cope with it." Ben Shoshan said in contrast to Tel Aviv's image as a rich city, 40 percent of its 420,000 residents — 168,000 people— are living below the poverty line. In an economy that almost requires both parents to work—or look for it—in order to support their families, the municipal government and religious institutions understand the value of preschools as a place where children can be left safely. "There are some people, like the Orthodox Shas, who would like to take the kids and put them in kindergarten and prevent them in the future from going to normal school, to the military and to work," Ben Shoshan asserted. "So we are losing these kids for the rest of our lives. "So the mayor decided we are going to fight this phenomenon. The way to fight this is to create kindergartens and pre-kindergartens and bring these kids in— with no cost, the municipality is paying — and save them from poverty and for the future. So this is the struggle within Israeli society." Ben Shoshan said the need for secular preschools and kindergartens is particularly high in the southern section of Tel Aviv, where condominiums for young families have replaced slums. Besides the preschool and kindergarten project, he said, the municipality is trying to raise funds for a science center for older children at which teachers from the Weizmann Institute come twice a week for a whole day. The program began three years ago with 100 pupils and "today we have between 500 and 700 on the waiting list." With Israel's crowded universities able only to accept students with relatively high SAT scores, the municipality has created a new college offering courses towards practical degrees, Ben Shoshan reported. "The demand has been growing," he said. "We started building the first building and are finishing it, and now we are going to build a second building for 40 million shekels— half to come from donors and half from the government. "This will be built in an undeveloped area of Jaffa (which is largely Arab in population) and will promote cooperation between Arabs and Israelis. It will promote the involvement of students in the community, and you know what students can do in a community, how much it can upgrade the standard of life in an area. "Our prediction is that this college will have an enrollment of 10,000 students by 2010." The former Navy commander-in-chief also said that there are special programs for Tel Aviv¹s 80,000 elderly people who need support. He said 30,000 of the elderly people in Tel Aviv are Holocaust survivors. "They have special needs. In fact, they are the most lonely people on Earth. Most of them don't have families, most of them don¹t communicate with others." Recently, he said, the municipality created a special gathering place for Holocaust Survivors called Club Europa, where they could socialize. He said doctors reported that the number of psychological, psychiatric and even medical problems among these elders dropped encouragingly. These were just a few of the projects ticked off by Ben Shoshan, who said more information can be obtained from the Web site www.telavivfoundation.org. |