Paul Sann Journalism, Letters , Writings

reporting

New York Post Thursday, November 3, 1955

By PAUL SANN

executive editor

The Bible said the land would flow with milk and honey, and it does. But it comes high. The Bible didn't mention that.
Israel is just like America as far as prices go. Everything costs plenty.
If his wife isn't working, the man holding down a job in Jerusalem or Haifa or Tel Aviv is in trouble. He can barely make it once his taxes and the groceries are paid.
If his wife is working they can eat a little better, clothe the family a little better, go to the movies (cinema, there) more often, buy an LP record now and then or even a hardcover book, and maybe have a drink or so with dinner. Not all of those things, of course, just some of them.
Israel is short on meat, eggs, butter, sugar and cooking oils and that's where the biggest pinch comes for most families. meat

The family buying rationed meat--all kosher--can get only enough for a quarter of a pound per person per month. But there's more meat available--plenty more--in what Israel calls the "free market" and we used to call the Black Market.
The difference in price on rationed meat and free market meat--also kosher unless it's imported by private wholesalers rather than the Government--is painful: 23 cents a pound for one, $1.20 for the other. There's also canned meat, off rations, for 70 cents a pound.
The Israeli buying rationed eggs gets only 12 per person per month but isn't too badly off in the free market. Eggs are 4 cents each on rations and 5-1/2 cents off rations--except in August when the supply is short and the free market egg goes to 9 cents.
Butter on rations comes to 35 cents for a pound and quarter--what a family is entitled to each month. Off rations it is 35 cents a pound.
Sugar and cooking oils are also on rations but again the housewife can get more if she can meet the free market's stiffer prices. hope

Everything else is off rations in Israel now, although chicken is scarce enough so that no city family can count on getting much more than two pounds a month.
In any case, the austerity of a couple of years ago is not quite so austere now, especially for the family with two or more working members. And the dismal sights of the harder years--the long lines outside the stores for even such staples as potatoes and onions--are gone altogether.
As far as eggs, butter and chicken goes, Israel's dairy farming has been making strides, so an easing of those shortages is in sight. When imports can be cut down or eliminated entirely, as in the case of vegetables, everybody's going to eat better for less money.
Meat is something else. Israel hauls beef from such countries as Abyssinia, Argentina, Turkey and Eritrea. Local beef furnishes only one fifth of the total supply, so everything depends on "Operation Cowboy," north of the sea of Galilee, where the Jewish State is making its first attempt to build its own cattle industry.
Food is not the only high-priced item in Israel. Clothing comes high. The average family figures to spend $30 a month for clothing, shoes ($10 for a good pair), and repairs. For the man whose wife isn't working, there can't be much left after the family has been fed and the other bills paid.
Low rent helps, however. Israel has kept tight controls on rents, so that it takes no more than $10 to $20 a month out of the average purse. An Israeli can get a pretty good apartment--terrace and all--for $20 but there is a gimmick:
"Key money" is legal in Israel, and it hurts. apartments

To rent a three- or four-room apartment of his own, a man might have to produce anything up to $4000. It's an above board transaction: the landlord pays a tax on a third of it. The tenant himself can get back two-thirds by selling the key himself when he leaves--the other third goes to the landlord.
Whatever traffic there is in the best apartments, of course, is limited to a handful of affluent families. But "key money" goes down in relation to the quality of the apartment a man is renting--all the way down into the hundreds.
Since even hundreds are hard to come by in Israel, and the supply of housing has not kept up with the great population increases in the big cities (Tel Aviv-Jaffa, 358,000; Haifa, 154,500; Jerusalem, 144,000), there are still many thousands doubled up two, three and four families to an apartment and sharing all facilities.
[Most of Israel's police calls result from rows among unfriendly neighbors in over-crowded flats. Steadly rising juvenile delinquency also is attributed to the slum condition.]
Nobody's happy about this condition, of course, but there's only so much construction labor to go around, only so much capital for building, and limited materials. As with everything else in the infant state, the long-term solution needs time, lots of time.
When you get into Israel's social structure the talk invariably turns to the military situation, because the defense item is the biggest thing in the government's budget--more than half.
I asked one government official in Jerusalem what Israel could do if it didn't have to live under a kind of war economy. He talked about lower taxes, more social services, free kindergartens, more and better schools, more scholarships to the university, more roads to open up the country, more land under irrigation, more railways, more mining in the Negev.
But there's a catch in all this and the more realistic Israelis know it.
future

Even if a permanent peace with the Arabs could be reached, as unlikely as that is, Israel will have to spend heavily on defense for years to come.
"Let's face it," a top official told me. "You don't dismantle your military organization when you sign a peace pact. Certainly Israel couldn't and we don't imagine that the Arab states would do it if by some miracle a real settlement could be arranged.
"It would have to be years--many years--before you could even consider any appreciable cuts in the military budget. We look at it realistically. There would be no profit in deluding ourselves.
"We have such and such an economy--most of our money must go for defense--and we have to do what we can within that framework. We have to go slowly. It is not a situation Israel made for itself. It was forced on us by our neighbors. What can we do?"
Nobody in Israel, possibly nobody in the West either, appears to have an answer to that question.
____

TOMORROW: The Women of Israel.

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