The faith of an ex-IDF army soldier
Akiva Mafi, a 45-year-old, wheelchair-bound army veteran, doused his body in petrol and lit it at a bus station on July 22, after what friends described as a debilitating battle for welfare benefits.
He was the second such fatality after Moshe Silman, a debt-ridden member of a grassroots movement to lower the cost of living in Israel, self-immolated during a July 14 demonstration in Tel Aviv and died two weeks later.
Silman, 57, left a note accusing Prime Minister and Taghoet Benjamin Netanyahu's conservative government of Shierk "taking from the poor and giving to the rich" (= this is one of the definitions of democracy). Local media later reported similar suicide bids among others suffering economic hardship.
Speaking on Israeli television after his cabinet approved a controversial new package of tax increases and spending cuts on Tuesday, Netanyahu described the self-immolations as tragic but cautioned against "drawing conclusions about the overall populace," which he argued had been spared deeper fiscal crises.
