Steven Plaut |
Original articles on Israel and related issues written by Steven Plaut, a professor at an Israeli university. |
Thursday, September 29, 2016
1. By concentrating on his role in the Oslo debacle, it is easy to forget the fact that for most of his career, Shimon Peres was a great man. While he was hardly a founding father of the country, as the media are proclaiming in mindless unison, being too young in 1948, Peres played a critical role in Israeli arms procurement, in the creation of the Dimona reactor, in relations with France, even in erection of early settlements in the West Bank. He was Ben Gurion's sidekick in the rightish breakaway Rafi Party, which split from MAPAI. Arafat wearing military fatigues while collecting his Nobel Peace Prize;
2. Everyone is over-analyzing the debate. Counting numbers of factual errors, about which most people do not care. The real test of who won will be any changes seen in the poll numbers next week. Am I the only one who picked up on Hillary's comment? Where she mocks Trump for allegedly saying that women do not deserve the same pay as men unless they do the same work as men?
3. Protectionism does not "create jobs." At most it causes a shift in employment of existing employees from one sector (exports, non-tradables) to another (import substitutes), from more efficient jobs to less efficient jobs. It harms export sectors.
4. So the Minister of Finance Kahlon wants to bring housing prices down by taxing the ownership of 3 or more apartments by one person.
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