Avi Aharon

Picturing the future Objectivist state of Israel, I consider it trivial to imagine how it would look. Business and employment-wise, the last two decades had already provided lot more opportunities than the decades before them. Sure, you had no government position waiting for you when you were 21, but with a little resourcefulness and imagination, you had many doors open to you and many directions to chose from.
What about education? I went to government-owned schools. Out of five schools and a university, one was excellent, one was terrible and the others were somewhere in between. How’s my son’s kindergarden doing in comparison? I think it’s doing pretty good. Kids at the ages of 4 and 5 know more math than I knew at the age of 7 (they count to 100, add to 20 and subtract to 10, most of them read at least a little, they group child books by authors, and so on). Kindergardens in Israel are mostly private, and they influence the government-owned as well. I’ll return to this fact later on: the fact that you have a privately held kindergarden, and free competition, improves the government-owned kindergardens.
Now, what about defending the state of Israel?
What if we had 5 to 10 private armies? What if the army unit that is in charge for the border with Gaza were private? The common believe is that the last time a western civilization had more than a single, centralized army, it looked like hell.
How do we know? Well, we all read Hobbs at school.
I believe that the basic concept that gets someone to win a war is not the concept of a centralized government and a single army. The concept is to be always prepared (invented by the Romans, and helped them to last for a thousand years). To what extent, and how to accomplish this preparedness? The Objectivist answer is that the it is up to you.
The IDF – the Israeli army – is doing very lousy. Should the southern command be privatized as a whole? Maybe not. Should tank and infantry divisions all be privatized? Again, maybe not. Should a contractor apply for a government contract for defeating Hamas? This is an option I’d consider a good sandbox to gather information from.
Is this contractor going to take us to 12th century England (here’s an excellent Atlasphere article on Ken Folett’s mediavel novells)? not if you don’t subject yourself to the church and accept the fact that practicing your sword for several hours a week can’t be all to bad.
I guess we all agree privatization is good. Starting a private business won’t corrupt you, right? Getting you close to money won’t corrupt you, either.
The privatization of the army shouldn’t scare the Objectivist mind, certainly not for Hobbsian reasons.

The mission of the education-inspiring Israeli is threefold: forgetting everything he was taught in the government mandatory education system, pay for the tuition on top of the taxes paid for funding – among other things – a huge government system and put whatever left on the not too many private schools and universities available in Israel.
The common objection of the government mandated education system is that the government is not permitted to tell someone how to educate their kids, nor to take their money for this purpose (I apologize for putting ‘government’ and “purpose’ in the same sentence).
This objection is thorough and complete. It calls not for the privatization of the government education system, but for its abolition.
Privatization won’t benefit me. I don’t want to be handed with the school that I am currently paying for. I don’t want to be forced to make education my business, as I would like to put my efforts on my kid, not on yours.
Now, I know that not all Israeli schools are equally bad. One of the ways to ensure proper education for your kids is to move to a rural town that is already known for its good schools. Rural towns are relatively small, so the parents can easily get a hold on what is going on in schools. I have to say that I am very pleased with the kindergarten Amir attends to. Nevertheless, I was forced to send him there and I wish this was not the case.
The costs of education, we are told, are the same with private education as well as the government-owned (NIS800-1000 for half-day, NIS2000 and up for a full day). The budget of the ministry of education is NIS-Billion-25, which is divided onto 2.5 million kids, hence NIS10K per kid per years. This money is taken from my income tax, on top of the direct payment made to the kindergarten. Hence, I pay twice the cost for my kid’s tuition.
The objectivist abolition of government education system will reduce my costs by half. I don’t even mention the years that I did pay taxes but had no kids.
The main problem with government-mandated education is not the money I spend, though. The bigger problem is that the system itself is of a very low quality. It teaches very little and educate for brutality and violent behavior. The schools are too big, with too little personnel. The studies are dull and the kids, being kids, are turning the boredom into playful, however purposeless behavior. The school finds itself responding to insubordination and violence. In the past decades – at least ever since I went to school – the education system has monotonously deteriorated.
If you want your kid to be able to study computer science, you have to teach him all the math he needs by yourself. This is an easy task, though; as it is not that difficult to surpass the math level being taught at school.
So your kid might evade the violence and purposeless of school life. What about the others? What about the other kids that don’t have parents such as yourself?
The answer, I’m afraid, is that they are doomed. The are doomed to violent, purposeless life. These are the kids that took a rifle and shot at a school bus in Rosh Haayin earlier this year (and killed two kids). These are the thousands of kids that are growing to be adults that don’t make a living without the help of the state. They are doomed to live on welfare and breed the next generation of voters that favor big government. Ooops, maybe I am onto something here.
The government education system has to be abolished altogether. This system’s budget has to return to the taxpayer. Let us chose how to educate our kids and fund this education on our own.

“A year from today, there will be no Hamas”.
How’s that for a prediction?
Well, in October 2000 I predicted that within a year, there will be no PLA.
As we all know, I was wrong.

Has anything changed in the past 9 years? During these 9 years Israel has been fighting a war it could have won in a month or two; these were 9 years of a war that got Israel to the worst recession in experienced in 4 decades (the last time Israelis just didn’t buy any apartments was in the 1965 recession).
Hamas generously provides a casus beli. That’s true. It’s always a good thing to have your enemy doing some of your job. The new Silkworm it possesses can reach Tel Aviv. With a little luck, a single missile can send the entire Gush Dan area to shelter, wiping out several business days just like that. Don’t mention the casualties, of course. Several dozens of them, for sure.

So Israel has each and every right to get rid of Hamas today. Wipe it completely out from the map. But does Israel have he capability of doing so?
In October 2000, Israel failed across the entire theatre. The IDF had lost one battle after the other. It was helpless against the PLA.
Contrary to the IDF, the Israeli police has won the battle of the galilee (in which Palestinian Israeli citizen blocked several highways in the north part of Israel) but lost in court. Lost in an Israeli court, that is. Yeap, the Police general who ordered to open fire on these Palestinians, had 13 of them killed and won the battle within a day, was kicked out of the police because he shot Israeli citizens. Clearly, no one wants to win a battle only to find himself in court. This – among other reasons – is why Israel is losing the war so far: Israel has chosen to lose.
What about other reasons for the almost-decade long lose?
Israel has tried to engage the PLA (including Hamas) several times. In operation Defense Shield (April 2002) its army conducted five battles, failing in one (Jenin). The low-quality IDF infantry has lost 13 soldiers just like that. The Israeli public has shown that it won’t stand so many loses, and the operation was halted. A week later, an invasion to Gaza was cancelled for this very reason: the IDF feared of having more casualties.
The reality of war is that fear of casualties only brings more of them, so in 2006 Israeli suffered some 200 of them. The IDF infantry was even worse than it was in 2002 (who says it progresses nowhere…), proving that Israel is incapable of occupying land.

Between 2006 and 2008 Israel has made a bold move. It didn’t bother to fix its Infantry. The land moves in operation Cast Lead were as poor as they were two years before: no gain of land, no advancement, and – probably most importantly – no gain of confidence among the soldiers.
However, Israel has improved its air capabilities. Hamas is following Hezbollah and Fatah in fighting an asymmetric war, and Israel has retaliate in an asymmetry of its own: I suspect that the IDF land forces were only a mask. Sure, they were fully mobilized, burning lots of diesel fuel and shooting lots and lots of projectiles. This was a cover for the introduction of the new air capabilities. In 4 minutes, over 100 plains (mostly unmanned? I believe so) got some 200 Hamas combatants killed.
Nice, isn’t it?
A basic axiom in the symmetric warfare is that in order to gain land you must have land forces. Israel seems to be breaking this axiom. It took Israel some 9 years to do so. The price is way too high for my taste. Nevertheless, I am convinced that the next war will be the Hamas last war.
I am thankful for Hamas for acquiring the Silkworm missile.

Uriel Lynn is a prominent Israeli capitalist. He is the presidents of The federation of Israeli chambers of commerce, had been a member of the Knesset for decades and an enthusiast defender of capitalism (he’s an hebrew article defending the rise of the Shekel and calling to abolish protectionism).

In a recent article, however, Lynn complains about the rich who don’t pay enough taxes. Not the most capitalistic opinion you’ve ever heard from Lynn. What could cause a capitalist to call for increased income tax?

Well, it is the government, of course, who had managed to trick the Israeli capitalist one more time.

As in most of the western world, the Israeli income tax is “progressive”. That is, the tax percentage increases with your income. for the first few Shekels you pay 10%, for the next few Shekels, you pay 20%, up to 58% of direct taxes (income tax, social security and mandatory health insurance combined).

Last year, the ‘capitalistic” goverment of Netanyahu has decreased taxes for one of the taxation levels, cuasing a little anomality (see the linked article for the exact numbers). Mr. Lynn, instead of calling for the abolition of direct taxes altogether, would settle for a little justice. “Justice”, when it comes to your relationship with your goverment, could be simply a cancellation of this tax cut. It’s a love-hate sort of relationship, and in case you didn’t know, you’re the one that finds himself eye folded and tightened to a low bench.

Defenders of capitalism in Israel – and Lynn is a respected leader of this crowd – have to avoid pitfalls of that kind. It is much simpler to call for the abolition of direct taxes altogether. The goal is to keep the taxpayer’s money where it belongs. Why settle for less?