Hiding behind children

This government has an impressive style. It never initiates anything, and when problems show up on its doorstep, it handles them so clumsily that it generates new and even more complicated problems. Perhaps it's because there is not, and never has been, a policy here; just the extinguishing of historical fires in a way that causes new ones to ignite.

Granted, this government inherited most of the fires from its predecessor. But it has managed to turn them into raging conflagrations. Take, for instance, the issue of the foreign workers' children. This, too, was inherited from previous governments. But the feckless way it has been handled, laden with hypocrisy and bad intentions, is characteristic only of this government.

Nevertheless, it is necessary to tell the unpleasant truth: The public relations campaign centered around these children is problematic, and the focus on the children (who, of course, are innocent and heart-rending ) diverts the debate from the main issue.

Granted, in a society that sanctifies the family and worships children (to the point of harassing battalion commanders about "our children" the soldiers, lest they be overworked in training and obsessing over murders of children ), there is nothing easier than waging a battle centered on children. But this choice has falsely divided people into two fictitious camps - the compassionate believers in human rights, who open their hearts to all the nations of the world and weep over every child with pigtails, and the brutal, racist deporters of children.

This is not a serious discussion - and for those who define themselves as leftists, or at least as liberals, it is also not an honest one. The fact that neither this government nor any of its predecessors ever had an immigration policy does not justify abandoning the debate over migrant workers, and thus, effectively, debate of the whole issue of work and citizenship in Israel. The pigtailed little girl is only one link in a chain. And anyone who ignores this is deceiving both himself and others.

Israel's "foreign workers" can be divided, as is well-known, into three groups: the "legal" ones, for whose importation the government issues permits so that they can work in agriculture, home nursing care and construction; the "illegals," some of whom initially came here "legally" while others infiltrated across the border (and this group further subdivides into those seeking to work here short-term and those who want to put down roots here ); and the refugees. This rightist government, and especially Shas, treats the first category with rank hypocrisy. It is issuing more entry permits than ever, and at the same time is hunting down tens of thousands of exploited workers who have gone underground.

Interior Minister Eli Yishai (Shas ) is particularly brutal toward those with families or who had children while they were here, on the ethnocentric grounds that they endanger Israel's Jewish identity. But Yishai also understands that the weakest class of Israeli workers is genuinely threatened by the migrants, whose offer of cheap labor with no strings attached comes at their expense. This threat, however, does not seem to touch the left's heart at all. It is quick to denounce the "racist" poor.

The left errs by ignoring that while the free-market economy has enabled all of us to buy cheap Chinese goods, it has also destroyed organized labor and eliminated job security. It used to be workers from the territories who did the low pay jobs, arriving every day at dawn and departing at dusk. But after the intifada began, successive governments found a way to punish the Palestinians while still enabling the Israeli public to enjoy the good life - and the left offered no objection.

The rich benefited. But the losers were not only the poor, but also Israeli society as a whole. It became less moral, more economically polarized and more hard-hearted toward the weakest workers. Israel's naturalization laws, in contrast to those of other Western countries, are problematic and must be revised in a liberal, universalist spirit. But the country's high natural population growth and population density obviate the need for immigration.

And yet, people continue to come - non-Jews who immigrate under the Law of Return, migrant laborers and refugees - and most of them integrate here successfully. This process, however, will become moral and rational only when the legal importation of cheap foreign labor is halted, the minimum wage is raised, benefits are guaranteed for all workers, Israeli Arabs and Palestinians are integrated into the workforce, and the despicable scare mongering about undermining Israel's Jewish majority stops. All of these are things a responsible left should be demanding instead of hiding behind the tiny backs of children.