Thou Shall Not Steal: Not Even from Rich Oil Tycoons

Moshe Feiglin
Manhigut Yehudit
21 Kislev, 5771
(Nov. 28, '10)

Translated from Ma'ariv's NRG website

Editor's note: A number of months ago, the Noble Gas Company discovered vast stores of natural gas in Israel's territorial waters. According to a prior agreement with the Israeli government, the royalties from the discovery were supposed to have been substantial. But after politicians mixed in, the government appointed the Sheshinski Committee, which advised Israel to re-adjust its tax/royalties structure on hydrocarbons. This proposal means that Israel will renege on its initial agreement with the drilling company and significantly lower the sum of the royalties.

First, proper disclosure. I have never met oil tycoon Yitzchak Teshuvah and I do not have any stocks or interests in Noble Energy. I have no reason to support them. On the contrary – as a politician, it is worthwhile for me to ride the populist wave and vociferously align with the witch hunt against the tycoons who "steal" the public's wealth.

But I have a small problem. Theft is theft and robbery is robbery – even when the victims are wealthy. True, many aspects of the Israeli version of capitalism are avaricious. The huge profits pocketed by Israel's banks are mostly based on interest gained on private accounts – not from actual business deals. This totally contradicts Jewish law and the Jewish spirit. This means that the banks are a motor of servitude – not of economic growth, as they are supposed to be.

The banks are only one glaring example. The salary gap in Israel is among the highest in the world. It's a dog eat dog world out there and the cunning chap who amasses power uses it to trample the person beneath him – without blinking an eye.

The solution for our problem with capitalism is not to institute socialism. Socialism is simply a sophisticated form of robbery that makes everybody poor. An ideology that rejects the sanctity of one's possessions will ultimately lead to a complete contempt for the sanctity of life. It is no coincidence that Stalin and Mao were the greatest murderers in the history of mankind. For some reason, we also seem to have forgotten that "Nazism" is a shortened version of "National Socialism." Socialism is the last thing we need.

We suffer from an exploitative form of capitalism because we have adopted it without our Jewish culture that would refine and restrain it. Jewish economics is based on a triangle. Its base is the sanctity of life and possessions, a.k.a. capitalism. But the triangle has two other sides: faith and kindness. The three Forefathers of the Nation of Israel; Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, were billionaires. The approach that associates property with immorality is Christian. But if you remove capitalism from the ethical envelope of Jewish faith and kindness – you are left with the jungle that we experience today.

Back to the gas royalties. It is sad to see the transformation of politicians who espouse capitalism at every opportunity into populist Robin Hoods, robbing the rich to feed the poor. What usually happens in these cases is that if the Robin Hood doesn't know when to stop when he gets into power, the rich flee and he proceeds to rob the next layer of society.

(Read full article)

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