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By Arie Egozi

This is something we’re experts in: Instilling fear among the public.

Last week, the Knesset Subcommittee for Readiness of the Home Front held a hearing to discuss the State’s level of preparedness for an earthquake scenario.

According to the data presented at the hearing, in case of a strong earthquake in Israel 7,000 people will be killed, 8,600 will be seriously wounded, 170,000 homeless, 9,500 will be trapped under the ruins, of which 98% will be rescued or found during the first week, mainly by family or neighbors.

In response to a question raised by Knesset Members, it became clear that a draft of the “Home Front Law”’ was already distributed, the draft assigns the National Emergency Authority (RACHEL) the power to allocate authority and even place sanctions, however it has been confronting massive opposition and criticism.

Foot dragging, inefficiency. Welcome to Israel.

Another pitfall. According to the Emergency Authority’s data, there are 80,000 buildings with at least three floors in Israel, which had been built before 1980 and will not survive a strong earthquake.

In 2010 the government decided to invest in buildings strengthening the sum of NIS 140 million annually for 25 years, but the decision was not implemented since 2013. The Home Front Authority said they were acting to return this budget, but the problem is that the Ministry of Finance would only give the funds if they are “matched” with equivalent sums, and the ministries find it hard to pay their part from their own budgets.

In sum, the government doesn’t care about us, the citizens. A lot of talking but in fact very little action.

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I did not need the State Comptroller’s report to learn that Israel is not prepared to confront cyber attacks.  

The Comptroller stated that several instructed organizations have not been keeping pace with the implementation of the perennial program of implementing cyber security requirements, and that “there are gaps between the magnitude of the threat over the civilian cyber space as a whole and the speed of the State’s organization and response process”, added the State Comptroller. “The dependence of numerous organizations on their computer systems has been growing fast. The events in the global cyber space reflect the dramatic increase in the cyber space threat, from the aspect of the amount of events as well as from their level of complexity.”

In Israel there are organizations which were authorized to deal with this new threat. There are teams, offices and budgets, however very little has been actually done.

So also in this context, in Israel there is a lot of talking but very little is done.

When a large scale cyber attack causes death and injuries – an investigation committee would be established. That’s the way things work at the holy land.

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The State Comptroller report on the huge failure in the treatment of road accidents reflects once again that Netanyau’s government doesn’t give a damn about us.

The report found that nothing has been done to decrease the daily killing on the road.

We do not interest Netanyahu and his ministers.

The killing can continue, as long as they sit on their chairs.

Netanyahu knows to speak well even when his words do not reflect reality. He spoke well also on this subject, he promised a ministerial committee under his leadership, but that turned into a useless general directors committee.

In short, our Prime Minister is not interested at all in our lives, as long as he keeps on sitting on his comfortable armchair. And the ministers are not any better. They too only want to stay sitting on their chairs and appear on each and every TV channel… This is the face of the Israeli government today.

This report will be on the headlines for a couple of days and later it will just be archived. Do not expect actions, as said – we do not interest Netanyahu and his incompetent ministers.

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It has already been for many months that the two central state defense industries – the Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI) and Refael – do not have board chairmen.

Two persons are very suitable for the duty – Yair Shamir, who already fulfilled that role, and former minister Uzi Landau.

The appointment has been jeopardized every week with a different excuse. Every week they explain why these figures could not be appointed.

Meanwhile, these two companies have no board chairmen, a very important position.

No procedure in this country has been done the right way. They should stop dealing with nonsense and confirm the appointment of Shamir and Landau.

Arie Egozi iHLS editor-in-chief
Arie Egozi
iHLS editor-in-chief