Even in a country where crowdfunding is spent on anything that moves, the campaign launched this week is an unusual sight: the Sdot Negev Regional Council wants to raise NIS 32 million from the public. The head of the council for more than a decade, Tamir Idan, clarifies that the money is intended for a precise list of needs, including equipment for the alert classrooms, assistance in evacuating and hosting residents, and assistance to the education system. Tens of thousands of soldiers and reservists were called to the flag without any means of transportation. Hundreds of thousands of soldiers trained in the assembly areas, with civil society taking care of every kind of equipment, from underwear and a sandwich to a ceramic vest. Hundreds of thousands of citizens who fled or were evacuated from their homes were absorbed into cities, towns and communities on the personal and local initiative of the receivers, without government involvement (alongside the important absorption in hotels).
Long before the Treasury announced a special budget for evacuated families, an endless amount of donations of clothing, furniture, electrical appliances and medical equipment was raised. A treatment area for Nova Party survivors was set up overnight based on volunteers and donors. Battalions of volunteers march on agriculture, and battalions of artists, musicians, entertainers, therapists and child stars make their way voluntarily among the surrounding communities scattered throughout the country to try to alleviate the distress and pain for a moment. Civil society on the home front did not wait for the government, and made every effort to meet the urgent needs on the ground on its own. This happened because a government system, by its nature, is slower, less dynamic, and has a lower ability to adapt within hours to the new reality. It has to hold meetings and issue tenders and approve the budget, and of course pay salaries to all the officials along the way. It needs to take into account standards, insurance, forms, approvals, and in any case its response is more sweeping and less personalized. On the eve of the war, we dealt extensively with the question of who was under the stretcher, and only one thing was hardly discussed: the size of the stretcher.
Israel's public sector has been inflated for years; Only the salary expenses of its employees amount to about half of the state budget. But the problem is not the high pay, but the low reward. The average tax on wages in Israel – a little less than 25% – is not particularly high relative to other OECD countries, but it is perceived as high among the public because the quality of education, welfare, transportation, housing and standard of living require us to spend a lot of money on top of that. A state that takes responsibility for a wide range of areas of life works only when it goes hand in hand with the public's high trust in the government, including trust that this money will be channeled to raise the standard of living of all citizens. Public trust in the government stood at 2022% in 24, according to traditional research by the Israel Democracy Institute, and has likely declined since then. The huge sums raised in the first weeks of the war made Israeli public opinion clearer than any survey: We do not trust the government to manage our money efficiently.
A state that takes responsibility for a wide range of areas of life works only when it goes hand in hand with the public's high trust in the government. Public trust in the government stood at 2022% in 24, according to traditional research by the Israel Democracy Institute.
It is customary to divide this debate between economic right and left, but this is a mistake, and the war made it clear how unequivocal and shared the public interest is: maximizing the best use of the resources at our disposal for the greatest range of needs.
If the first two weeks of the war showed that the public does not trust the government to act quickly and efficiently in the short term, the mass mobilization of a sum that is one-tenth of a mile of the state budget shows that even in the longer term, we prefer not to wait for the heavy and cumbersome system to meet the needs of the field. If this is the case, there is no reason why our public system should not strive to encompass fewer areas, leaving more money in the hands of citizens.
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