Who Wants To Go and Who Wants To Stay?

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20 Tishrei 5781

8 October 2020

The News on the Israeli Street

The daily Corona (Covid-19) update . . .

There are 281,481 confirmed cases—an increase of 9,172

216,613 of these confirmed cases have recovered—an increase of 5,216

866 are in critical condition—a decrease of 14

238 of the most critically ill are on ventilators—an increase of 13 

1,824 have died–an increase of 27

There are now 64,868 active Corona cases in Israel.

Please note that once again Israeli authorities and media are playing with the numbers claiming that there were only about 4500 newly confirmed cases of Corona identified yesterday. As we all know by now, one can massage the numbers depending on the times of day you check them. We continue to monitor the hours between 8 am and 8 am for our 24 hour period.

In  terms of cities, the six with the most newly confirmed cases yesterday were (in order): Jerusalem, Bnei Brak, Modi’in Illit, Ashdod, Beit Shemesh, and Beitar Illit. Not surprisingly all of these are “religious cities” or cities with large ultra-orthodox populations (Ashdod and Beit Shemesh).

Also not surprisingly, the Health Ministry reported yesterday that 51% of all students and teachers who are infected come from the ultra-orthodox sector.

To sum up the data as of this morning:

1 in 33 Israelis has been infected with Corona
1 in 148 Israelis has an active case of Corona
1 in 5,811 Israelis is currently hospitalized with Corona                                  1 in 5,076 Israelis has died of Corona

Corona or not Israel’s foreign exchange reserves . . .

. . . continue to soar. As of October 1, Israel had $160.58 billion dollars in reserve.

Part of the reason for the large reserve is that the Israel Bank keeps buying dollars in hope of driving down the value of the shekel against the dollar.
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Unfortunately, the Bank has been having little success. As of 8 am this morning, the exchange rate was $1 = 3.397 shekels.

TODAY’S BLOG

Who Wants To Go and Who Wants To Stay?

In case you missed it, the annual survey of Arab youth has just been published. One of the questions asked was “As you know, some people leave their country and emigrate to another country. Which one of the following best describes you?

The graph is self-explanatory.

Of course polls like this depend on a multitude of factors such as who is asking the question, the tone of the questioner, whether the respondent is afraid of answering for whatever reason, etc.

Nevertheless it is interesting to note that not surprisingly, the oil-rich Gulf states such as the UAE, KSA (Kingdom of Saudi Arabia), Oman, and Kuwait have happy youth who have little desire to leave their countries and emigrate elsewhere.

On the other hand, war-torn countries such as Libya, Yemen, and Iraq have many young people who want to leave. After all, nobody wants to get killed.

And yet, there are some surprises here:

Why do 77% of Lebanese youth want to leave Lebanon putting it at the top of the list? Is it because of the ravaged economy? the fractiousness caused by Hezbollah? the fear of an impending war with Israel? Or all of the above?

Why do only 54% of Syrian young people want to leave? Virtually nowhere is more war-torn than Syria; are Syrians more nationalistic than others?

And why do only 26% of Egyptian youth want to leave despite the country’s lousy economy and soaring unemployment rate?

Obviously, what caught your humble servant’s eye were the statistics for “Palestine” and Jordan–which were almost the same at 58% and 56% respectively. 

Of course, in one way this is not surprising since Jordan is predominantly Palestinian, and yet one would have thought that young Jordanians would be happier than young Palestinians. 

After all, the poor Palestinians are supposedly living under a “brutal Zionist occupation” (pardon the cynicism) which makes life intolerable–if we are to believe the constant barrage of propaganda that issues forth from the PLO, Hamas, and every international entity under the sun.

Maybe life is not so bad in “Palestine” after all.

What is our cursory takeaway from this survey? Arab young people are basically unhappy with more than half of the youth in more than half of the countries surveyed wanting to leave.