Call for Reinforcements

In the almost eleven years of Israel's existence as a nation, white-thatched Premier David Ben-Gurion has never hesitated to take tough decisions, in spite of the consequences, which are often economic. The hard-pressed Israelis are still paying special heavy assessments for their militarily brilliant Sinai invasion of Egypt. Now faced with the problem of absorbing 100,000 new immigrants (mostly from Communist Rumania), the government last week slapped new taxes, up to 70%, on consumer goods, ranging from aspirin to refrigerators. It abolished rationing, price controls and subsidies on essential foodstuffs and proclaimed a "compulsory loan," which would eat up as much as 12% of salaries after taxes.

Despite Ben-Gurion's personal popularity, people were beginning to grumble, and last week they could be heard. The occasion was the election of a new Speaker of the Knesset (Parliament). First indication of trouble to Ben-Gurion's ruling Mapai (Labor) Party was the refusal of popular ex-Premier Moshe Sharett to make the race. Mapai put up a second-string candidate instead. He was beaten. The strong right-wing Herut Party ganged up with minor leftist parties in Ben-Gurion's own coalition to elect 75-year-old Nahum Nir, onetime head of the Polish Waiters' Union (who boasts that in 1906 in Warsaw he led the world's first successful strike against tipping).

Confronted with this setback, Ben-Gurion's ministers suddenly began to have second thoughts about raising taxes. And to bolster up his own apathetic party, the Premier called home articulate, erudite Abba Eban, 44, Israel's able, longtime Ambassador to the U.S. and the United Nations, invited him to get into politics. South Africa-born, Cambridge-educated Abba Eban will presumably be groomed to replace ailing Golda Meir (formerly of Milwaukee) as Foreign Minister. First he must get in touch with domestic problems, and learn to leaven his meticulous classical Hebrew with the kind of everyday Hebrew that contemporary Israelis understand.

Another attractive candidate being groomed by 72-year-old Ben-Gurion: one-eyed Major General Moshe Dayan, 43, former army chief of staff and hero of Sinai. Ben-Gurion packed him off 13 months ago to Hebrew University to catch up on his education after years of fighting; he has since flunked several subjects, is still hard at work making up for the schooling gaps in a busy soldier's life.

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