Israel Mcdonald's Children Poverty

Israel's McDonald's Donates Food to Impoverished Israeli, Palestinian Children

One out of three Israeli children suffer from poverty and hunger.

By Joel Leyden
Israel News Agency

Jerusalem-----January 7.....In a public relations move which transcends image and directly hits on substance, an Israeli branch of the McDonald's fast food chain has closed to the public and opened its doors instead to needy children, a statement from McDonald's Israel said Wednesday.

It said the firm's Rothschild Boulevard branch in downtown Tel Aviv aims to give a free meal and a Ronald McDonald clown performance to 100,000 Jewish and Arab children from all over Israel each year, at an estimated annual cost of NIS 2.5 million ($570,000).

The project began last week, but McDonald's waited until it was up and running before announcing it to the media, a spokesperson said, adding that local charities working with the needy would select the children. The goal is to host 250-300 children a day, four or five days a week, the company said.

About 40 percent of Israeli children lived in poverty in 2002, according to a report last month by Israel's National Council for the Child.

McDonald's Israel opened its first restaurant in October 1993, in Ramat-Gan, and was the first of the companies branches in the Middle East.

Today, McDonald's Israel operates more than 80 restaurants across Israel, of them 7 Kosher restaurants.

McDonald's Israel has donated hundreds of thousands of NIS to charities which benefit children, including: "Shnider Hospital for Children", "Make A Wish Association", "The Fighting Cancer Association", Variety Clubs, etc.

McDonald's Israel brings smiles to hungry faces.
Hopefully McDonald's will be creating a trend among commerical food suppliers to feed Israel's poor.

The McDonald's project is funded by the chain's charitable foundations in Israel and abroad, along with the Israeli Spirit charity and by McDonald's Israel's local suppliers, the statement said.

One out of every three of the 2,122,700 children in Israel lives in poverty. The services for children that were once abundant are now being lessened. Poor children are suffering in terms of education, health services, and culture. In a recent study a 41% increase in acts of violence involving children was found since 1990. There are 618,000 Israeli children that are poor with the poverty level among non-Jews almost doubling over Jews.

The striking statistic of almost 171,000 children were living in difficult economic circumstances in 1997 with their entire family's income based on welfare. Despite the astronomical amount of money spent on child welfare, the situation continues to grow worse. At the age of 18, every Israeli citizen serves in the Israeli Defense Forces. Men serve for 3 years and women for 2. This patriotic honor and responsibility leave many women widowed and children fatherless. As a result, the poverty level of these women grows worse each day. These horrible conditions exist for all of Israeli's.

However, almost 25% of the immigrant children that arrived in between 1990-1997 live in poverty. Dr. Yitzhak Kadman, the executive director of the National Council for the Child, encourages Israelis to stop seeing children as an expense and start viewing them as an investment.

According to the National Insurance Institute report, some 277,000 families lived below the poverty line in 1998, up from 270,000 the previous year. Yishai said the figure represents 1.2 million people, among them 440,000 children. Figures for the first time include statistics on the self-employed and residents of eastern Jerusalem.

The severity of child poverty in Israel was first witnessed while Ehud Barak was serving as Prime Minister. Barak's critics then accused him of pursuing foreign policy to distance himself from what they said was his failure to keep domestic promises to fight poverty and unemployment.

Ran Cohen, former trade and industry minister, called the latest figures a "social catastrophe," but said the core of the problem could be attributed to the policies of the previous Likud-led government.

"It is a black stain on all of us," Cohen said. He told Israel Radio that because the government of former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu wasted "huge sums of money on Jewish settlements, the fervently Orthodox and all sorts of corruption, this is the result - that people are living below the poverty line in Israel.

"Enough of abusing the peace process in order to solve the social problem. The social problem must be solved on its own."

Some 618,000 Israeli youngsters, accounting for one in three of the child population, are living below the poverty line, according to an official report published in October 2003.

A total of 339,000 families - representing 21 percent of the population - struggled to survive in 2002 with an income less than the official benchmark, the figures revealed.

The poverty line in Israel is set at 550 dollars per month for a couple without children.

The figures represent a significant rise on the figures released last year which showed 531,000 children were living below the poverty line.

"These figures are very worrying and represent a danger to Israeli society and we cannot remain indifferent."

The figures were revealed as the umbrella union movement the Histadrut threatened to hold a general strike last November in protest at plans unveiled in the recent austerity budget.

Omri Padan, CEO of McDonald's Israel,
thought of and implemented the idea of donating food to Israel's impoverished children.

"The socio-economic crisis, and not Israel's conflict with the Palestinians, is the country's true existential threat," according to the National Security Council.

In its annual assessment, delivered Monday morning to Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, the council proposed strengthening the police and directing their efforts to law enforcement and combatting violence, rather than terrorism, Army Radio reported.

Maj.-Gen. (res.) Uzi Dayan, a former head of the National Security Council who was responsible for compiling last year's assessment, said this year's assessments are correct.

"The socio-economic situation is the fundamental blueprint of our lives," he told Army Radio Monday. "We have to raise two urgent flags: we need to disengage from the Palestinians and build the security fence, and we need a socio-economic order, which just simply does not exist."