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Amendments to National Security Law: Destruction of Social Security

>> Read the full Position Paper 

This document includes Zulat’s comments to the “National Insurance” chapter in the Economic Efficiency Draft Law (Amendments to Attain Budget Goals for Fiscal Year 2025), which deals with the increase of the national insurance tax to be paid by a large segment of the Israeli public, in parallel with a sharp decrease in the allocation out of this tax collection to the National Insurance Institute (NII).

The NII is one of the most important foundations of the Israeli welfare state and its independence is its soul. The NII Law was designed to divorce the basic social rights of Israelis from changeable policies, political interests, and budgetary hardships by creating a fund separate from the state treasury to ensure those social services.

The NII operates simultaneously as an insurance entity paying contribution-based allowances and as a state agency disbursing social security benefits that are not backed by revenues and are funded directly from the state budget. This blending of functions has enabled the Finance Ministry to impose its authority over the NII, requiring the latter to comply with its directives in order to secure the budgets it needs for its proper functioning.

The proposal outlined in the aforementioned draft law amounts to an increase in regressive taxation that would particularly harm low-income earners and would primarily reduce the allocation of collected taxes to the NII, thereby critically undermining its stability. These steps would accelerate the NII’s path toward insolvency, effectively dismantling the social security system of Israelis. They would also deepen the discrimination against Israel’s working population and increase the economic burden on them. 

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Dr. Maha Sabbah Karkabi

 

Senior Lecturer in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev. She holds a Ph.D. in Sociology from Tel Aviv University (2015), a postdoctoral fellowship at the Center for Gender Studies, SOAS, University of London (2015-2016), a postdoctoral fellowship in the Department of Sociology at Tel Aviv University (2016-2017), and a postdoctoral fellowship Ph.D. at the Humphrey Institute for Social Research, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev (2018-2020).
Dr. Maha Karbahi’s areas of interest focus on the connection between social change, family behavior, and gender inequality in societies in the process of change and specifically in Palestinian Arab society in Israel. Her research draws attention to the study of family life and employment, using a combined “ethnic lens” and “gender lens” and paying attention to the perspective of Palestinian Arab women, a group characterized by intersections between multiple marginal locations, which over the years has remained hidden from the research eye. Dr. Karkabi-Sabah’s research is published in professional journals and chapters in scientific books that are considered pioneers in family research, work, and gender equality.

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Prof. Frances Raday

Professor Emeritus in the Lieberman Chair in Labor Law, in the Faculty of Law at the Hebrew University and serves as a full professor in the College of Management’s academic track, where she also serves as chair of the graduate program and as honorary president of the Concord Center for International Law Absorption. Radai was a member of a working group of the UN Human Rights Council on discrimination against women. In addition, she is a prominent and feminist human rights activist.

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Dr. Rawia Aburabia 

Faculty member of Sapir Academic College’s School of Law, received her PhD from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Her research deals with the interface between law, gender, minorities, and human rights. Has published in leading journals on the subject of the matrimonial laws pertaining to Muslim women in Israel. Her book Under the Law, Outside Justice: Polygamy, Gendered Citizenship, and Colonialism in Israeli Law is expected to be published as part of the Gender Series of Kibbutz Meuhad Publishing House.

Dr. Aburabia has extensive experience in international human rights and public law. She has worked as a jurist for the Association for Civil Right and has been invited as a specialist to address such international forums as the United Nations and the European Parliament on the subject of indigenous communities and minority rights. She has interned with Human Rights Watch in Washington DC, and has been a member of the executive board of Amnesty International. In 2018, she was selected by the magazine Globes as one of the 40 most promising young persons in Israel under the age of 40.

 

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Ron Kessler

With over two decades of experience in the field of digital content, Ron has participated in numerous political and social campaigns. He helped run the digital activity of senior public officials, and worked in various NGOs. Ron is a fundamentally optimistic man, who believes that Israel can be changed and so can people. Lives in Tel Aviv.