Dan Ben-David, at The Blogs

Sep 26, 2024, 4:36 PM

Israel’s most important weapon is in danger

Ultra-Orthodox students seen learning in the classroom of a Haredi 'Talmud Torah,' in Beitar Illit. (Nati Shohat/ Flash90)

Sophisticated beeper attacks and the interception of missiles on a massive scale are made possible by technology developed by people who received a good education. In light of the security challenges that we’ll face in the future, given that...

Aug 25, 2023, 9:35 AM

A playbook for stopping Israel’s demographic tidal wave

With birth rates that are double to triple those of Israel’s remaining population groups, the country’s extremist parties may appear to be on the road to eventual control regardless of what happens with the current judicial coup attempt. But...

Mar 16, 2023, 11:57 PM

PART 5 OF 5

For a glimpse of Israel’s future, look not at Poland or Hungary, but at Afghanistan

Likud party chairman Benjamin Netanyahu, right, shakes hands with United Torah Judaism party leader Yitzchak Goldknopf in the Knesset plenum on November 21, 2022. (Yonatan Sindel/Flash90)

Israel has reached its demographic-democratic point of no return. At some point, the secular Netanyahu will be gone. Not so his Haredi and Jewish supremacist partners

Mar 15, 2023, 7:36 PM

PART 4 OF 5

Tackling an existential danger — Israel’s neglected education system

The Nisui School in Jerusalem, ahead of the opening of the school year, on August 31, 2022. (Yonatan Sindel/Flash 90)

With the children of the fastest-growing population groups receiving a third-world education, a first-world economy will be unsustainable, a first-class army impossible

Mar 14, 2023, 9:56 PM

PART 3 OF 5

On being fruitful and multiplying…exponentially

Ultra-Orthodox Jewish men attend the wedding of the granddaughter of the Rabbi of Sanz in the city of Netanya on November 1, 2017. (Yossi Zeliger/Flash90)

While the share of Haredim in Israel’s population doubles every 25 years, their leaders deprive children of the basic education necessary for global economy and modern democracy

Mar 12, 2023, 9:43 AM

PART 2 OF 5

Government priorities pivoted in the 1970s. Israelis today are paying the price

Traffic jams on the Ayalon highway in Tel Aviv, on December 2, 2021. (Tomer Neuberg/Flash90)

Traffic jams and packed hospitals are just two results of decades of placing sectoral interests above national ones

Mar 9, 2023, 1:16 PM

PART 1 OF 5

The unsustainable path of the start-up nation

Israelis take part in ongoing protests against controversial legal reforms being touted by the country's hard-right government, in Tel Aviv on February 25, 2023. (Photo by JACK GUEZ / AFP)

For years, the economy has been like an engine running on just a few of its cylinders. The coalition's judicial overhaul risks exacerbating the strain

Mar 15, 2021, 4:40 PM

Featured Post

These 3 critical domestic problems should determine how you vote

Young Jewish girls eat at the Yad Ezra V'Shulamit center in Jerusalem. The organization serves over 1200 children under the poverty line hot lunch everyday, and distribute over 10 000 food packages to families before the Jewish holiday of Rosh ha Shana (New Years). September 27, 2011. Photo by Nati Shohat/FLASH90

Does your candidate have a policy plan to address the core reasons Israel is falling behind? If not, vote for someone else

About Me

Prof. Dan Ben-David heads the Shoresh Institution for Socioeconomic Research and is a Tel-Aviv University faculty member. Named 'Person of the Year' by Calcalist newspaper and included 3 times in the Haaretz-TheMarker newspaper’s annual list of Israel’s 100 most influential people. His academic research placed him among the ten most cited economists in Israel during the years 1990-2000. Ben-David has twice received Tel-Aviv University’s 'Best Teacher Award.'