The next generation of Israelis will not be able to support a first-world economy or first-world army, Prof. Dan Ben-David of Tel Aviv University and head of the Shoresh Institution for Socioeconomic Research, told Sarah Ben-Nun on The Jerusalem Post Podcast.
Ben-David was highly critical of the state of schooling in Israel, which he said was causing nearly half of Israel's children to get a subpar education.
"An increasing share of Israel's children aren't getting the tools and conditions to work in a modern economy," he said. "At some point, this group of children, which will become adults, will not be able to support a first world economy, only a third world economy or developing economy."
This, Ben-David said, could have dire consequences for the IDF and, by extension, Israeli security.
"This means that there will not be first world healthcare in Israel or first world welfare, but also not a first world army," he explained.
"The things that enable us today to shoot down missiles and blow up beepers and basically protect ourselves... these things are invented by people who grew up in a different era. Many of them had received a fairly good education. We are now planting the seeds for future generations, and that makes this issue basically unsustainable."
Saving Israel from sinking like the Titanic
This issue is one that Ben-David feels does not get full attention in the press, and it is what his Shoresh Institution is hopes to raise awareness about.
"We have 12 people at Shoresh, the majority are economists with PhDs and nearly all the remainder have graduate degrees in economics," he said. "We're a small group and we're apolitical. We take the academic approach where we assume A impacts B, we test it, and regardless of what we initially thought was true or not, we publish it.
"That makes it possible for us... to meet basically everyone across the political spectrum, from right-wing to left-wing and religious and non-religious."
He likened Israel's situation to that of the Titanic, heading towards total disaster.
"There's a huge iceberg ahead," he said, continuing the Titanic analogy. "We need to start moving the ship together in a different direction."
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