Israeli News: A Daily Analysis

A Daily Analysis

By Marc Schulman

October 10, 2008- Rioting in Akko- Economic Fears in Israel

The rioting in Akko continued tonight and caused the city to cancel the annual Akko Arts festival. The rioting started when an Arab car drove through a Jewish neighborhood on Yom Kippur night and was attacked. The driver acted following, it would seem, the call to worshippers by a preacher in one of the mosques to enter the streets and respond. Things rapidly spun out of control from there. As I write this piece, a tense quiet has descended on Akko. However, there are fears that some members of the Jewish community in Akko are planning further retribution. The events in Akko, are of course, very disturbing. Akko is one of the few Arab Israeli cities where Jews and Arabs have been living in relative harmony for 40 years. The one odd element in all of this was that on Tuesday, one of the Arab Knesset members warned about the possibility that Jews might attack Arabs driving on Yom Kippur.

The Israeli stock market will reopen on Sunday, after having been closed for three days. The fear is that it will be an ugly day on the stock markets there. The further fear is that the collapse of the shrew prices of the major Israeli conglomerates could lead to an Israeli version of the American meltdown. Lev Leviav the majority owner of the Africa-Israeli Corporation, among others, has suffered over an 18 Billion shekel paper loss in the last two months. His real estate empire is highly leveraged; with Israeli banks and pension funds the major lenders. What happens if he collapses? The Israeli TV tonight showed an interview with Leviav taped on Erev Yom Kippur claiming no one had anything to fear, and that he could not understand why his stock was tanking. Unfortunately, the head of Bear Sterns and Lehman Brother said the very same things in the days before their collapses.