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By Haim Yoavi-Rabinovich
February 15, 2008
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A budget of a hundred million shekels, from the feckless Olmert government, is earmarked for celebrating the State of Israel's 60th anniversary.
Yes, ladies and gentlemen: one hundred million shekels, coin of the realm. You would think that this government had something to celebrate.
Ladies and gentlemen, in one month's time the People of Israel will be celebrating Purim and nothing has been budgeted for that. In two months' time the People of Israel will be celebrating Passover with no budget from the government. Not so much as one agora.
The 60th anniversary of the State of Israel will be truly celebrated only by that part of the nation whose heart does indeed hold the Jewish State dear, and those celebrators need no budget at all. Their joy is spontaneous.
Yes, I mean that same part of the nation that is well represented in the combat units of the Israel Defense Forces, in social assistance projects, in the shopping trips to Sderot, in aiding the weak and the development towns, in volunteerism, and so on.
Yes, I mean that same part of the nation that extends its hands daily to give and not to take.
It is safe to assume that the whole budget for the 60th Independence Day celebrations will make its way, in the end, to that part of the nation that extends its hands not to give but to take, and whose heart is remote from the joy of nationhood.
I feel like the father whose boy brought a low report card home from school. The father began to examine the grades, and upon each failing grade he scowled at his child. Finally he reached the last of the grades, an A in singing. And then he slapped his son's face. The boy asked, "Papa, when you read all the bad grades you didn?t slap me. So why did you let out your anger when my A in singing came up?"
The father answered, "If after all those lousy grades you still feel like singing, then you deserve a slap."
If the government of Olmert and Ruhama Avraham still feels like celebrating, and with the help of a hundred million shekels, then we should be giving a slap across the face to such a government.
Accordingly, I propose that the entire budget of one hundred million shekels be handed over, in toto, for the support of the residents of Sderot.
Views expressed by the author do not
necessarily reflect those of israelinsider.
 
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