the motorbike demonstration

The motorbike demonstration

By David Verveer

The Israeli insurance companies have raised the insurance on motorbikes with 24% starting today, the 15th of November, on the first working day of the week.
Generally on Sunday, the entrances to the economic capitol Tel Aviv are from 7 o'clock until 10 o'clock blocked by private and public transport trying to get to the work sites, and people waste lots of time getting to work. But today, those angry motorcyclists by thousands decided to block the entrances of the metropolis, by driving slow in large groups, preventing anybody to pass them, in order to create a chaos, and an absolute non ending traffic jam.

Many people, who come from the periphery of Tel Aviv, out towns from the Sharon or from the south, decided to take an earlier bus or even take the train, packed to the maximum with desperate passengers, but as the train will not be affected by traffic jams, it is a preferable alternative, than sitting in busses the entire morning.
My wife made it by an earlier bus and arrived without any traffic jams two hours too early, and as she missed out breakfast this morning, she will go and get a cup of coffee, before going to the office.

In actual fact, the public views with sympathy the motorcyclist's demonstration, as the increased cost for motorbike insurance is unfair and irresponsible measure of the government, which only result will be an increase of old cheap cars in the already congested streets of the Israeli towns, where it is impossibilities in finding a parking space to leave your car during working hours.

Especially Tel Aviv, but also other towns in Israel do not have subways, city trains and other public transport, besides the busses and taxis, crowding the streets. People, even though, more expensive, prefer to drive with their own cars into town, and in most cases the cars are without any passengers besides the driver. Of course this traffic congestion does not contribute to the air quality in town, and the air pollution level reaches dangerous levels in the Tel Aviv, Haifa and Jerusalem.

Not to mention that the traffic accidents annually reach in average 450 dead, much more than the annually death caused by the military and terroristic acts of Israel's enemies, however, peculiarly the sacrifices caused by traffic accidents don't reach the world press, while any aggravation or terrorist act are directly published worldwide in the media. I wonder if the deaths, caused through traffic accidents are less tragic for the families, than killing of innocent civilians, by acts of terror.

But in the end, all this is a sadistic game with taxing and revenues, in which the poor and less fortunate are forced to pay impossible payments, while the rich get tax exemptions, and receive illogical large salaries, with a lame excuse that we do not want to frighten off the investors, but what with your young and the retired citizens, who have no means to pay for Netanyahu's financial outlook, indeed it was important that Israel remains economical healthy, and we are thankful (I think) that the financial crisis is over, but for heavens name, the only ones who paid for these phenomena are the lower classes, the retired, the poor and sick. No efforts were made to tax those huge investors, for whom a ten percent tax increase would hardly play a part in their profits, while taxing the poor 1% more, would mean thousands more incapable in finishing the month.

How come that every time the Likud takes over the government after winning the election (this time they even did not win but were able to construct a funny right wing coalition), suddenly the Government tells us that we have to tighten our belt, we have to contribute in order to save the countries economy, with temporary taxes, increase in costs for basic needs (bread, water, electricity, fuel, cereals, public transport and I could go on, but like anybody else, I forgot yesterdays prices, and try to keep my nose above water level).

Many of those price increases could have been prevented, if earlier governments and ministers of finance, such as Netanyahu had listened to the professional advices given him by experts by investing in the infrastructure, but no, they preferred to make it easier on the owners of the infrastructural monopolies, increasing their profits. I know we can not compete in cheap labor, industries based on cheap workers are impossible to thrive in Israel, even in the agricultural and horticultural sector, we have to realize that nobody is paying in order to keep the farmer happy, everyone in the Global village wants the best quality of products at the cheapest price, facts of life.
What we need, and indeed succeed already in many aspects, is to go after high-tech projects, even if that means, selling them eventually to other countries in order to produce those Israeli inventions elsewhere, as our strength lays in technology, not in cheap labor. Taxing the poor more will lead to disaster, as they have no reserve left, they can not afford another blow, they are already milked dry.