Paul Sann Journalism, Letters , Writings

reporting

New York Post Wednesday, November 2, 1955

By PAUL SANN

executive editor

In Israel, the approaching winter of 1955, in the eighth year, looks like the worst of times and the best of times--
the worst of times because the hostile Arab next door is riding high now that he has found a willing helpmate, ardent suitor and rich uncle--all in one economy-size package--in Moscow.
the best of times because for all the evident nearness of a new and bigger war and for all its hardships and growing pains good things keep happening in the Jewish State. Look at them:
worker

* There's more irrigation and more land under cultivation, much more.
* There's cotton growing where nothing grew before. There are more vegetables and citrus fruits--Israel's chief export--are coming in better.
* There's an "Operation Cowboy" under way to develop a cattle industry so there'll be more meat for less money.
* There's more and more food, always a little less austerity than the year before.
* There's continuing progress in industry--in metals, machine production, electrical appliances, cement, chemical products.
* There's little year-round unemployment--nearly everybody who wants to work has a job.
* There's more and more good housing going up everywhere, in the city and on the farm, as fast as it can be built.
* And, of course, there's the dream of oil coming true--oil in the Negev. Nobody knows how rich a store lays under the parched sands but hopes are very high. Israel spends up to $50,000,000 a year on oil imports now; that kind of money can work wonders in the domestic economy.
None of this is to say that the infant state is on the verge of any American-style prosperity. Of course it isn't. But it is throbing and thriving and going ahead. The wheels are turning.
If you leave out the war situation for the moment, you can say Israel is an easier country to live in than it was last year and the year before. fewer complaints

And for the average Israeli it is very likely an improvement over the place he came from, in any case.
You hear this double theme on every hand in Israel.
The man who has been there from the start, who lived on fish so long and shared a common kitchen and a common toilet with three or four other families and may now have his own apartment, puts it this way:
"Sure, it's not easy living here. What you make you spend on food, after you pay your taxes, and if you have anything left over at the end of the month your wife is either a genius or she's got a job of her own.
"But it's not as bad as it used to be. Every year there's less to complain about."
And from the government economist who is impatient about complaints and speaks plainly because his own lot is nothing to write home about:
"Remember, almost everybody in Israel is living in what you could call luxury compared to what he had before. Most of the people came from Eastern and Central Europe and what we call Oriental economies--places like Morocco and Iran--where living standards are extremely low.
"Whatever they have in Israel, no matter how little, they're better off. They're eating better, living better. And don't forget the social services--schools, medical plans, social security . . . These are things most of our people never heard of until they came here.
"So there's compensation for hardship. It's tough in Israel but not as tough as where we came from, usually."
Let's see how tough it is in the Jewish State.
Pay is low.
Histradut, the giant federation embracing most of Israel's organized labor, has gone along with the government on a wage freeze since 1952 to help hold back inflation.
There have been some small pay boosts since then--keyed to rising living costs--but the working man hasn't always come out too well in the economic tug of war. As production costs go up, so do prices.
Today the common laborer may be making as little as $10 to $30 a week, the semi-skilled worker under $40 and the skilled--including many professional people--somewhere between $49 and $50.
All this is before taxes, which are high but coming slowly down. The income tax runs on a rapidly rising scale upward from 15 percent for most people, but that's only the beginning. There are other bites: municipal taxes, school taxes, water taxes, union dues.
And luxury taxes are steep. Israel, like the U.S., operates on the theory that if you want to live high you have to pay. Take drinking, as an example: a domestic brandy in Tel Aviv costs as much as imported Scotch--about $1 a drink.
The highest individual tax rate is 65 percent, but that only applies on every pound (55 cents) a man earns beyond $2,750 a year and very few make that much, including the professionals.
The limit a man can pay on his total income is just under 55 percent but Israel only counts 500 men in that class, identified as the "500 millionaires" or "the shining circle." They are the most affluent factory owners, importers, wholesalers or owners of citrus groves and they're millionaires more in terms of their holdings than hard cash.
(In most cases, the "millionaires" came to Israel well-fixed to start with; it is not a country for the Horatio Alger routine at this stage.) salaries

The civil servant is hard pressed.
If you start with the pay of the Prime Minister you get the idea fast: he makes $183 a month (yes, a month) but only finds $163 in his envelope after the withholding bite.
Of course, the Prime Minister has an expense allowance and a government house on a hill in Jerusalem. The house is utterly lovely and furnished in splendid taste.
(And its setting is not only picturesque but exciting--it's only a rifle shot from the Jordan border and the fun-loving soldiers in Glubb Pasha's Arab Legion.)
The Prime Minister is not the highest paid man in the government. Supreme Court Justices get more than double his pay and Magistrates draw $244 a month.
But the mass of the 46,000 civil servants go way down the scale. Ministers, department heads and the Chief Rabbi draw $172 a month, skilled laborers $160, engineers $146, doctors $142, tax inspectors $135, clerks $111 and typists $108. An unskilled laborer in government gets $80 a month. That's also where police pay starts.
All those figures are before taxes, and apply only to men with two children. Pay goes up or down according to the number of a man's dependents.
When I was in Israel a few weeks ago, there was a raise on the way for key government people. It appeared to be coming in the nick of time: on and off for years. Israel's civil servants have talked about striking for living wages.
Inequities are common, of course, with pay geared to size of family. I got the best illustration of this in Tel Aviv from Inspector General Yeheskel Sahar, head of Israel's police force. He was taking home $180 a month against his chauffeur's $l60--the chauffeur happened to have five children, Sahar only two.
(In the U.S., Sahar's salary--probably up around $2,300 a year now--would be a cross between FBI Chief Hoover's $20,000 and Police Commissioner Kennedy's $25,000, since he holds both jobs in Israel's all-in-one police set-up.)
more farmers

Next to industry (135,000) and the public and private services (110,000), the biggest single unit in Israel's working force of 561,000 is farming. There are 102,000 in agriculture--not nearly enough for the tasks at hand--and their incomes are below even the hand-to-mouth levels cited above.
In the kibbutzim, the collective settlements where everything goes into a common fund, the farmer has no cash income at all. His extra needs, if any, come out of the kitty, as determined by the kibbutz's self-government.
There are 76,000 Israelis in the communes, and they generally get the space when outsiders write about Israel, more so now that a network of kibbutzim has been thrown up along the Gaza Strip as a kind of Maginot Line against the Arabs.
But in its normal development Israel's farm economy depends more on its variety of cooperative smallholders' settlements, where a man owns his own land and can prosper according to his own labor and skills. More than twice as many Israelis have been drawn to this type of settlement than to the kibbutzim.
Either way, the state isn't complaining. What it wants, what it needs very badly, is the product of the farm--any way it can get it. The more it gets from the land the less it has to import at high prices.
____

TOMORROW: Rations and prices in Israel.

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