Jacob Bachar, a kibbutz representative (on behalf of the Labor Party – Democrats) on the JNF board, is partly proud of the JNF decision to transfer the rehabilitation money to the wrapping kibbutzim and Kibbutz Nir Oz in particular. In an interview with the “thing”, he talks about the historical decision, but also does not save a visit to the state’s conduct: “Respondent between the JNF’s and the state’s rehabilitation budgets came to justify the government’s scandalous decision – not to transfer in time the money that Snir Oz needed the most urgent.”
Two weeks ago, the JNF board confirmed one of his major budgetary decisions ever, NIS 750 million of the fund’s money would move to the wrapping and Lebanese border with the aim of expediting the rehabilitation processes of the communities.
One of the main characters behind the decision is Bachar, who serves as chairman of the economic organizations in the kibbutz farms in addition to his position on the JNF board. “What about us and the finances of the Treasury?” Bachar says angrily, “The JNF is a separate body from the state, owned by the Zionist Organization. We decided on these budgets separately at our discretion. “
Today, after approval of the JNF budgets, the rebellion claims that they have been approved for Nir Oz for about NIS 1 billion and the money is already available for use without any other budget. The JNF board took time to approve the budgets, and the foundation even criticized it from various factors. Because state budgets were built in the transfer of these funds, a bureaucratic complication was created in practice to decide on the rehabilitation.
The decision to transfer funds required a long process until the fund’s board of directors. The case was routing the fund budgets intended to address the short -term needs of the residents in the affected localities, toward long -term goals. The board also had internal disputes related to the implications of transfer of this magnitude to one settlement: “You have to understand, there are other kibbutzim in a serious situation that requires money,” Bachar says. “But I insisted that Nir Oz is the hardest case and so we insisted on being, for him to get more.”
Also on distinct national issues – kibbutzim has no effective lobby
Bachar ends a 5 -year term on the JNF board, during which he managed to transfer a series of NIS 1.3 billion plans for the countryside – a large part of them for the rehabilitation areas.
In recent weeks, the Democratic Party chairman Yair Golan chose not to recommend him as the party representative in the KKL -to -November elections. According to Bachar, this is a political move designed to weaken the power of the kibbutz movement in the party institutions, which is a combination of the ‘Labor’ and ‘Rum’ parties, the historic parties of the countryside. According to him, this is not personal accounting but in some of the long -standing trend of moving the liberal camp from the needs of the rural space in general, and the agricultural industry in particular. This process led to a situation in which also in the face of distinct national issues such as a crisis of rehabilitation budgets, the kibbutz remains without an effective lobby.
“Party supporters in the rural space are in growing distress: the ongoing crisis in agriculture and land, cruel protection and wild import – but our representatives seem boring,” says Bachar. Over the weekend, Energy Minister Eli Cohen of the Likud rejected the discussion of the water council designed to approve a significant cut in the amount of water to farmers. Cohen did this on the grounds that the cut would be severely damaged in farmers and the subject was required for further examination.
Bachar is not surprised to see, once more, how a right -wing representative leads to a fight that should be at the core of the country’s interest: “David Bitten with the water law and Avi Dichter with the Food Security Law, created a partnership with us and stood by us with the attacks against the farmers.
The Democrats’ Party said in response: “The working and kibbutz settlers are the supreme flesh of the Democrats and we intend to keep this important connection and connection. In the next government, we undertake to invest in the countryside, and in particular those who paid the heaviest price in October and still pay – it is the same. For the countryside in the national institutions, in its impression of the Knesset and any other institution, as it has been to this day. “
