After warning last week that Israel does not have the “luxury” of cutting its defense budget by even one shekel, Defense Minister Ehud Barak Saturday slammed the Finance Ministry’s proposal to slash NIS 2.5 billion from his department's budget in 2009.
The Cabinet is scheduled to debate the budget on Sunday. Barak said Israel did not “have the luxury" to make budget cuts "in the face of threats we face, including Iran, Syria, Hizbullah and Hamas."
Welfare and education are part of defense, and a responsible leadership must simultaneously achieve social strength and security.
Barak also slammed a statement by Finance Minister Ronnie Bar-On last Tuesday that the government had to choose between making cuts in social welfare budgets and spending on defense.
The Defense Minister said the attempt the “present a dilemma between defense and welfare is deceiving. Welfare and education are part of defense, and a responsible leadership must simultaneously achieve social strength and security."
On Friday, Knesset Member Tzachi Hanegbi, chairman of the Knesset's Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, and six defense subcommittee heads sent a letter to Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and government ministers warning the cuts crossed the “red line.”
In its letter, the committee wrote, "This week saw the two-year anniversary since the end of the Second Lebanon War, which demonstrated to all of us in the most painful way the heavy price of neglecting the military and minimizing the defense budgets in the years that preceded the war.”
The committee also pointed out the specific deficits suffered by soldiers at the front -- the deterioration in equipment stocks, a decrease in regular forces' training, and the decrease in the fighting ability of elite combat units – and noted that all came as “a direct result of the cut in defense budgets during those same years."
According to a report by the committee headed in 2007 by former Finance Ministry director-general David Brodet, the defense budget was to be raised by an annual NIS 46 million as well as additional incremental supplements over the next ten years.