Here in Spain, severance pay for workers is 45 days per year worked, a Franco -era rule that no longer keeps companies from firing workers -- the intention back then -- but ruins them if big layoffs are necessary. It also dissuades companies from hiring workers on any other than temporary basis, and is a major reason for Spain's 20-percent unemployment rate. But change it? Impossible. The recent move to lower it to 22 days -- still higher than the European average -- met with strikes by workers who call 22 days "free dismissal." So nothing changes.
Israel's tortured history just goes to prove that old adage: Be careful what you pray for because that old joker God just might give it to you. Does an Israeli feel the frisson of history when he opens a hardware shop on land that his ancestors worked in 2011 B.C.? Does he sell his first screwdriver and think that the heartbreak and bloodshed of war and the oppression of his neighbor have been worth it?
Man is an extraordinary being capable of every contradiction, but even so, it must be strange, really strange, to be Israeli.
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