Chairman Amir Peretz of the Labor-Bridge Party has responded to the Bituach Leumi National Insurance Institute's poverty report by saying, "The poverty report showing that the middle class and young families in Israel are exposed to the danger of poverty, the generation of builders of the land and Holocaust survivors living in poverty at the highest rate in the last decade is a testament echoing time and again that the next government needs a social heart transplant."
Peretz concluded, "By [Prime Minister Binyamin] Netanyahu, poverty has become a cornerstone of democracy."