EDITORIAL : THE JERUSALEM POST, ISRAEL

 

 

For real competition

Atrusty old adage advises us to “never ruin an apology with an excuse.” But this is just what Ofra Strauss did at the Caesarea Public Policy Forum on Monday, when she admitted: “We were wrong. It’s a fact.”

She is chairwoman of the Strauss Group, Israel’s second-largest food and beverage company and also a substantial international corporation. Strauss’s firm is one of the prime targets – right after Tnuva – for public outrage over skyrocketing dairy prices, which have sparked the consumer boycott of cottage cheese.

Her apparent contrition afforded a unique opportunity to peek into the mindsets of some in our rich set. Strauss confessed that she was taken aback by the omnipresent anger, which she never expected and had never suspected existed “out there.” Her consternation was so profound that it took her two days just to regain her composure, she said.

Her shock is perhaps the most disquieting factor of all, along with the use of the term “out there.” It denotes alienation from average folk, the ones who purchase the Strauss Group’s products and those of companies like it, and a lack of consideration for customers’ buying-power. It suggests a prevailing assumption that consumers can be relied upon to pay, docilely, whatever they are asked to pay.

Strauss offered several excuses for the price hikes that have caused widespread outrage, including that the food industry is “merely one link in the chain of prices” and that “this is part of what is happening in the whole world.”

She omitted mention of the fact that, even if we factor in higher raw material costs globally, Israelis still pay far more than their counterparts in other developed countries. There’s no avoiding the conclusion that we’re being charged exorbitantly – far above what commodity fluctuations in the international marketplace mandate.

Moreover, this has been escalating ever since price controls were lifted a few years ago. Deregulation was supposed to spur competition, which was supposed to lower prices. Instead, the precise opposite has occurred.

The fact that prices increased rather than decreased indicates that no improved competition took place. This points to the probability of price-fixing and similar cartel- type machinations.

Most milk producers in this country sell their product to the giant Tnuva, which is flanked on the production side by Strauss and Tara. The retail chains evince no regular long-range readiness to reduce their profit margins either. Everyone but the consumers seems to be doing well.

The very notion of introducing dairy imports to force competition on the local market, as suggested by some in government, seems to have set the cat among the pigeons. Kibbutz dairymen have gone so far as to threaten to violently disrupt imports. That all components comprising the local milk-processing complex are so agitated merely by the threat of imports speaks volumes.

But imports aren’t an ideal solution, especially when elsewhere in the world governments subsidize and protect farmers. We don’t want to destroy our agriculture and allied industries, even if they have misbehaved. But that misbehavior cannot be countenanced either. When arrogant producers and retailers habitually and haughtily ignore consumer buying power, they gravely undermine the entire economy.

Both over-regulation and under-regulation are detrimental to free enterprise. Imposing price controls gums up the system. Conversely, the importation of short shelflife products isn’t necessarily practical (not to mention kashrut issues).

The point of attack must be elsewhere. There is chronically in this country a mammoth failure to root out price-fixing. Groceries aren’t the only cases in point.

Monopolies pervert much of our consumer reality – from housing, cars, fuels, electric appliances and hi-tech gadgets to cable, Internet and cellphone services. The readiness of the Israeli consumer to put up with anything is taken for granted.

It’s time bureaucratic snarls were undone to facilitate deterrent antitrust enforcement. As things operate here – and as they have for decades – we enact laws that prohibit price-fixing but these are rarely implemented vis-à-vis the most egregious conglomerates, whose movers and shakers often closely collude with political power-players.

Turning the spotlight on actual cartels or quasi-cartels is a strategy that demands extraordinary political courage given our specific circumstances. But this is what must be done. It’s not prices that need to be regulated but anti-competitive conduct.

Yishai’s divisive meddling

Who is a Jew? It is a question that has been hotly debated, defined and redefined since the establishment of modern Israel 63 years ago.

Part of the difficulty in determining who is a Jew is tied to the tension between religion and citizenship. The Law of Return opens Israel’s doors not only to someone born to a Jewish mother or someone who converted to Judaism, but to others as well. Anyone married to a Jew, to a child of a Jew or to a grandchild of a Jew is eligible under the Law of Return for automatic Israeli citizenship, as is someone who had a Jewish grandparent. As a result, an individual considered eligible for automatic citizenship under the Law of Return might not necessarily be considered “Jewish” under religious criteria.

The reverse is true as well. In a precedent-making case dating back to the early 1960s, the Supreme Court ruled that Father Daniel, a Carmelite priest born to a Jewish mother who converted to Catholicism, was not eligible for citizenship under the Law of Return even though he was considered Jewish according to Halacha.

Further complicating matters is the fact that the “Who is a Jew?” question is intimately related to the “Who is a rabbi?” question, particularly when determining the Jewishness of converts. Here, too, the Supreme Court has intervened, ruling that for purposes of citizenship, conversions performed by Reform and Conservative rabbis in the Diaspora will be recognized and converts will receive automatic Israeli citizenship under the Law of Return just like Orthodox converts. However, since religious services are controlled by the Orthodox Chief Rabbinate, these converts cannot marry in Israel.

Nevertheless, while the “Who is a Jew?” conundrum has not been solved, nor is it likely to be any time soon, a fragile status quo has been maintained. Issues having to do strictly with Israeli citizenship have been decided for the most part on the basis of nonreligious considerations – which only makes sense since citizenship, even in a Jewish state, is in the final analysis not a religious matter. In parallel, strictly religious issues such as marriage and divorce remain in the hands of the Chief Rabbinate.

NOW, IN an insensitive and unwise move that pits Israel against the Diaspora and arouses tensions between Orthodox and non-Orthodox streams of Judaism, Interior Minister Eli Yishai is seeking to “clarify” the “Who is a Jew?” question. Yishai, who has never attempted to conceal his contempt for non-Orthodox forms of Judaism, would like to reinstate the status of “Jew” on Israeli identity cards – but only for those whom he and other Orthodox Jews consider to be “Jews.”

If Yishai has his way, Reform and Conservative converts to Judaism will not be recognized as Jewish on new ID cards.

Not only is this move an affront to millions of Reform and Conservative Jews in the Diaspora, it is also in violation of the spirit of a High Court ruling dating back a decade. At the time the court ruled that, unlike individuals eligible for automatic citizenship under the Law of Return who are not Jewish according to both Orthodox and non-Orthodox criteria, non-Orthodox converts to Judaism had to be registered as Jews on Israeli ID cards since they had undergone a recognized religious conversion process. Yishai, who was interior minister at that time, too, avoided upholding the ruling by removing the definition of “Jew” as nationality from the ID card altogether, replacing it with a row of asterisks.

In his defense, Yishai says it is Holocaust survivors who have requested the reinstatement of “Jewish” on Israeli ID cards. According to Yishai, there are many Holocaust survivors and others who refuse to renew their old and tattered ID cards, issued before 2002, because they do not want to give up an ID card that specifies nationality as “Jewish.”

Yishai should indeed reinstate the clause that specifies nationality as “Jewish” – but he should do so for Orthodox and non-Orthodox converts alike. ID cards are secular documents that determine nationality and have no bearing on an individual’s religious status. Therefore, if the High Court has ruled that Reform and Conservative converts must be registered as “Jewish” on ID cards, Yishai must obey the ruling. The minister, after all, knows full well that as long as the Orthodox Chief Rabbinate controls religious services in Israel, there is no chance that an ID card will be used to prove one’s Jewishness for the purpose of marriage.
Yishai’s meddling can only arouse unnecessary tension between Israel and the Diaspora. Instead of intimating contempt for other Jews’ heartfelt faith, Yishai should at the very least avoid a needless confrontation that might endear him to his more close-minded, parochial constituents but which would alienate and infuriate millions of non-Orthodox Diaspora Jews.