“A relatively small cut”? Nakash, these are human lives • Opinion column | Ofri Peretz, a member of the leadership of the 'Most of the City' movement

A month ago, we submitted a query ahead of the council meeting. We asked a simple question: Why did the Haifa municipality administration choose to cut welfare budgets? What were the considerations that led the Finance Committee, headed by Nakash, to determine that the area in which there is a "surplus" and needs to be "streamlined" is the director who, in effect, deals with matters of life and death?

The answer we received was this: "The municipal administration has decided on a relatively small cut in the welfare budget. The implications derived from it are currently being examined."

It was also written that the welfare director “Attracts populations from other regions to the city”, who benefit from municipal services but impose an additional burden on the budget.

It seems that the municipal administration trusts that general words, in David font on official paper, will sound serious enough that we will swallow them without asking questions. And yet – Haifa Municipality, let's break down these statements, step by step.

“Relatively limited cut”:

In whose opinion? In relation to what?

If we talk about numbers, the declared cut is two million shekels. In reality, it is much more. What has not been revealed to the public so far and is not surprising given the iron curtain that was placed around the budget formulation process to prevent transparency, is that all the social worker positions in the municipality have been frozen. All of them. About forty positions, including positions for which workers have already been recruited and were just about to sign a contract.

So how much is two million shekels? And more Dozens of standards that you completely prevented from being implemented?

When the Finance Committee loves to measure everything “relatively,” it’s appropriate to zoom out, as is expected of someone who manages the budget of the third-largest city in Israel. Is this cut limited to immigrants from Ukraine or war refugees, when the envelope program that provided them with a solution is being closed? Is it limited to girls who will lose their transitional apartment, is it a cut for them, or a cut to where they are supposed to go?

First we decided, then we will examine the meanings.

When we make decisions about our monthly budget, it is worth asking, do we first set a number and then examine what it means? Or do we first examine the needs and then prioritize? Do we first throw an amount into the air and only later discover that the children will not be able to go to classes or a scout trip?

We can assume the answer is no. Because that's simply not how things work. But even if, theoretically, the answer is yes, when it comes to cuts in areas of life and death, and not a scouting trip, it's even more serious.

Haifa men and women, How does it feel to know that this is how decisions are made about your budget?

“Outside-city populations”

The third part of your answer: the claim about “populations outside the city” that supposedly create an unbearable burden, due to which services and personnel must be reduced across the board.

Nakash, after repeated attempts to contact you and Yona Yahav, which went unanswered, we were forced to come to your home last Thursday morning. We wished you good morning and asked how you sleep at night, knowing the consequences of these crazy cuts on people's lives?

Over the past month and a half, we have approached the municipality and asked over and over again: How much money have you saved at the expense of the elderly, abused children, and battered women? We asked for answers and didn't get them.!

City administration, your silence is deafening. What do you have to say to the women you are closing the frameworks for? Preventing the staffing of life-and-death positions, such as police social workers in domestic violence centers. Why aren't we getting answers? The unbearable gap between those who hide behind respectability, and those whose homes are not safe and who have no one to turn to, because you were worried that they wouldn't staff the position of someone who could have helped them?

During the term, we raised the issue of welfare more than once. The municipality's position, which is not based on data but on slogans, is that welfare services in Haifa serve foreigners who are not from the city and therefore should be cut. 

It is clear that the municipal administration has little knowledge of how services are run in welfare departments.
So let me help: A file was opened against a residential address in Haifa, and in order to receive the absolute majority of social services in the city – this is a necessary condition. This is true for the Mishol program (community work within neighborhoods where there are welfare patients), the domestic violence center, individual social workers in departments, treatment in parent-child centers and contact centers for people with disabilities and the elderly. All of these are areas where the shameful budget you signed up for will close programs, significantly reduce the scope of activity and leave many applicants unanswered.

Among the frozen positions are positions that the municipality is obligated to staff by law: youth workers, procedural workers. Women who believe in locating and treating children and the helpless in situations of abuse and risk. They all work with cases opened based on residential addresses in Haifa only. Haifa City Administration, what are you even talking about?.

Just this week, the body of another elderly man was found in his home, in an advanced state of decomposition, a week after his death. His home is on Moriah Street, in Haifa. Do you also consider him a “non-Haifa” burden?

Behind the Welfare Budget: Real People, Real Lives

We live in a political climate where many factors have taken care, on a variety of fronts, to create a reality for us in which social workers are overwhelmed and care for people who have no faces and no names. And yet, if we try for a moment to imagine the portrait of those welfare patients, in light of the disastrous budget that the Finance Committee is trying to pass, the picture that emerges is of needy and "poor."

But the truth is that welfare patients live and breathe among us. Most of the time they work 250% of their time, raise children, kneel under mental strain, sometimes without family support, without language, without intergenerational capital to support them. Not only does material poverty accompany them, but also ongoing humiliation, overt and covert, like this budget. What did you call it, this cut? "Relatively limited."

This column is dedicated to Amal Khoury, Rachel Bohbot, and Daria Leitel – three Haifa women who were murdered in their homes in the city. They did not have the supervision and rapid assistance they needed. They, like thousands of other women and men in Haifa, were entitled to a city that did not spare them.