The Knesset Finance Committee is right now holding a raucous debate over a request submitted by PM Netanyahu for a number of benefits - including a request to retroactively grant the Prime Minister the benefit of the State Treasury paying all taxes on income earned from payments and services by the Prime Minister personally outside of his salary and stipends all the way back to 2009. This benefit is expected to cost the State hundreds of thousands of shekels.

the request is bigger than that with more details and more aspects, but that brief summary is enough for me.

I am confident that the request will be granted and pass the vote in committee simply because Netanyahu and his fanboys hold the majority. They give him whatever he wants, and I see no reason that they won't grant him this as well.

The request itself does not bother me. I don't know enough to have an opinion as to whether the Prime Minister deserves such a retroactive reimbursement on his taxes and if he should be exempt from such taxes or not. I am fine with it, if this is something important for the functioning of the Prime Minister. it is probably "pocket change" relative to everything else, especially relative to the wasteful cost of the unity government and alternate Prime Minister.

That being said, I find it shameful that this what they are debating right now - another financial benefit to the Prime Minister, along with some other benefits under discussion, when there are hundreds of thousands of people in Israel still unemployed and struggling to get by, with businesses having shut down or shutting down due to the economic crisis, and the government comes up with no way to actually help them besides for adding more and more bureaucracy to their systems.

They throw pennies at business owners and freelancers and unemployed while they debate giving another set of hundreds of thousands of shekels to the PM personally with no red tape.

Maybe they can't afford to actually help the small business owners and unemployed whop are struggling to get by because they are giving all the money to the government and the Prime Minister.