 Hi friends and subscribers and welcome back to my YouTube channel Jerusalem and Israel unpacked this is Daniel Rosal here bringing you this video today from the from my little cranny here in the center of Jerusalem in Israel. All right, let's get into today's video but I want to firstly make a couple of notes about this YouTube channel note one is that for about the last six or eight months. My YouTube videos have been sort of these little animations I make up in Canva trying to explain what I think are interesting topics to do with Jerusalem and Israel. I look for the kind of slightly more offbeat topic. This isn't just kind of your standard pro Israel channel. I'm always trying to just explore behind Israel and Jerusalem a little bit. So recently I just haven't had the mental bandwidth really to produce that kind of content because there is, you know, obviously a war going on here. And it's just been a really busy time generally. And I've just reverted to this very boring production standard. I'm sure visually of me speaking into a webcam. I do it after my morning coffee and I just pretend I'm talking to a friend. So that's the first thing I'm doing more of these videos and I realize that they're not that visually interesting. So this is the note. I'm going to be less derelict in running my podcast. It's called the Daniel Rosal podcast and it's been I've barely put out anything for the last few years, but it is out there on Spotify and all your standard platforms. And because I think this is really more a podcast with a video element when I do these kind of videos, I'm going to be distributing them out via the podcasting platforms. You can also I highly encourage people to subscribe to YouTube premium because that way you can sort of watch any material as a podcast to support background playing. And I get absolutely insane value out of my monthly subscriptions. That's another option if you find me talking into a webcam to visually boring, but you enjoy the content. That's a recommendation I want to make the last place. My last studio was a little bit better, but then we moved we moved to a new apartment and there's just not a lot of space behind me there to do something exciting, but I will work on it. Anyway, today's video. Oh, and no two is that I interviewed last night a Irish guy who supports Israel called Kearon and I'm going to be editing that video either today or tomorrow. If you're interested in the Ireland, Ireland, Israel stuff and my videos have been very negative kind of dunking on Ireland a little bit. And people said, you know what? There is there is support for Israel in Ireland. There are pockets of support, so please for some balance. Can you do a video about the pro-Israel movement in Ireland? And I said, that's a great idea. Put out some feelers and the first guy to get back to me was Kearon. And we had a chat last night and we talked about the media bias in Ireland. We talked about the support for Israel in Ireland. And just if you're interested, keep an eye out for that episode of the YouTube channel. All right, let's talk today. I want to talk about what I see as three main challenges in Jerusalem. And I think a good rule of thumb is don't talk about challenges if you can't offer a solution. So I'm going to throw out three possible solutions as well. These challenges are informed by my almost decade-long experience of living in the city, as well as the research I've done for this YouTube channel, stuff like the Jerusalem Institute for Policy Research and whatnot. So both of those are forming my impressions here. All right, challenge one. And by the way, this is for friends of Jerusalem, this video. If you live in Jerusalem, this video is definitely for you if you're an English speaker. And if you support Jerusalem and its future because while we're currently married in war, we have to remember that there will be a day after. And I think it's important during this tough time of war to keep that in mind that there will be a day after and we will get back to building a future. And to some extent we continue building a future while we're at war. So I want to say as well that I think everyone who's a friend of Israel has to be a friend of Jerusalem. I don't mean has to, like you're forced to, but I mean that if you're a friend of Israel, you're a friend of Jerusalem because you're automatically a friend of Jerusalem because Jerusalem is the capital of Israel and Jerusalem is the epicenter of the Jewish people's connection to this land. It's more than just a city in Israel. So just want to say that. All right, challenge one in Jerusalem from my perspective, widespread poverty. The numbers fluctuate from year to year and Jerusalem is often called the poorest city in Israel. So that's a general longstanding trend. The numbers that I have here on my screen are that 47% of Jerusalemites live beneath the poverty line. Now that was from a couple of years back. So maybe it's gone up or gone down a little bit, but not drastically in either direction. And that is a shocking rate of poverty in the city. How do you see this? Well, you do see this if you keep your eyes open when you're in Jerusalem. Firstly, you'll notice a lot of beggars wherever you go. The second thing you'll notice is a preponderance in certain sectors of Jerusalem of these kind of supermarkets oriented for the ultra orthodox already population that are selling stuff like bulk pasta and bulk rice and what I would call subsistence foods, right? They're selling them on the cheap in large quantities. And this supermarket I'm referring for those who don't know to OSHA add is very is both run by all the ultra orthodox and that's their main client base. So you get hints of it, right? You see people buying 5 kgs of pasta to feed huge families and just scraping by and you see begging. And those are just two of the manifestations of poverty in the city. I'm just going to move my microphone a tiny bit here. So that's the challenge. Now Jerusalem is as I've said countless times and sorry to be so repetitive and boring. A city of three cities in one. You have the Jewish sector and that is two cities. You have the ultra orthodox Jewish sector, Haredi and your regular Jewish by regular Jewish. I mean, less religious Jewish people who define themselves as just that tea, which means orthodox or master tea, which means traditional. And that's where I see myself as being master tea. And then you have the Haredi as I mentioned, then you have the secular Jewish population. And then so that's ultra religious Jewish, less religious Jewish and Palestinian. The numbers, it's about 60 40 Jewish Palestinian, sorry, Jewish to Palestinian. So it's not that far off from being 50 50. So the idea that Jerusalem is a just Jewish city is completely false. Not only that, but the trend line is that Jerusalem is actually becoming slightly less Jewish. At one point it was 72% Jewish. Now it's down to 60 ish. So that's that. And then within the Jewish pop, you have a three, a third, third split approximately. A third Haredi, a third who are secular. There is a secular population in Jerusalem of Jews. And you have a third who are defined themselves as, as I said, that tea or master tea. So among these three groups of the city, the poverty really is mostly among the Palestinians and the Haredi. The non participation rate in the labor force. There are firstly among the Haredi. There is not as much as people think. And within the Palestinian, the most shocking non participation rate according to the Jerusalem Institute for Policy Research and their 2022 annual report, which I'll put a link to was among Palestinian women specifically. So the issue why you have such a shocking rate of poverty in the Palestinian sector at about 72%. It's got to do with the fact that the men are not earning a loss and the women for reasons of maybe tradition are not working. So you've got single income families with one of the income providers being, you know, maybe a laborer or stuff like that, right? Not very high paying jobs. And the city to some extent is trying to encourage the establishment of these kind of high tech centers in East Jerusalem was the idea of getting East Jerusalem. East Jerusalem, my Palestinian entrepreneurs, the resources they need to create the tech ecosystem that has drastically raised a standard of living among other groups in Israel. My solutions that I'm going to propose and I just remember I'm just a guy living in Jerusalem. Although I do support a specific political party here, and I have been trying to work within the party to get these issues on the agenda. My solution to poverty is that the city, I think, well, you've got two angles, right? The second non participation is one. That's the obvious place to start. Non labor force participation among ultra orthodox and Palestinian specifically. The second one is bringing companies to Jerusalem. Now I've been living in Jerusalem, as I said, for almost 10 years. And every time I've gone job hunting in Israel, it's been the same picture. There are barely any startups in Jerusalem and startups are, as I said, it's called high tech in Israel. High tech is kind of a catch-all phrase, meaning companies that are distinguished by their technology. But every time I've got job hunting in Israel, I've been like, why the hell am I living in Jerusalem? And why I'm living in Jerusalem is because I made Aliyah here to Jerusalem. And then I met my new wife. And for various reasons like jobs, we've been kind of rooted to the city since for some time or another. But every time I've been between jobs or moving jobs here, I've said there is no opportunity in Jerusalem. Now the numbers I have to support this claim were from startup nation central and they do really show a huge disparity between the employment picture in the Merkaz of Israel, the center, which is Tel Aviv and surrounding areas as Jerusalem. Jerusalem is drastically worse. So that has to change if Jerusalem is going to be a city that's going to attract and retain young people. Because right now it's doing one part of that picture. It's attracting youth and it's not retaining them. Why? Because people get fed up of the dismal employment scene here. I'm not currently job hunting myself. I work for a nonprofit, which is based in Tel Aviv. So I'm in the lucky situation that I only need to go to Tel Aviv once a week. A lot of people living in Jerusalem have to do that commute every single day. But I didn't have any choice in the last job hunt. None of my options were Jerusalem based. It was either this job or another job in Tel Aviv. I have a friend who's job hunting now for quite a while and he's told me it's the same. It's not changing. We don't see it getting better. I'm living in Jerusalem. I would say I haven't seen the same picture going on for 10 years now. So that really needs to change. My second proposition to our potential solution here, and I think this is one that gets neglected, is that we can, as that link to Tel Aviv, the light rail gets better and better. Or the train I should say, not the light rail. As that gets better and better, it's becoming increasingly viable for people to do jobs like the one I do. Right? I go to Tel Aviv once a week. It takes me now only one hour to get to Tel Aviv, 30 minutes on the train, 10 minutes to get there, blah, blah, blah. One hour give or take. It's not dreadful. And I listen to podcasts in a way and it's actually quite enjoyable. The fast train is wonderful. So with that link to Tel Aviv getting stronger and stronger and better and better, it's becoming more and more possible for people to do remote jobs in Jerusalem. Now, what do you need for a remote gig economy to flourish? I'm going to suggest two things. One of them is co-working spaces because no one likes to work alone all day or very few people do. And we need affordable co-working spaces, not WeWorks. We need high quality, well managed and affordable co-working spaces, creating bubbles and ecosystems for people working remotely, whether it's with companies in Tel Aviv or Herzliya or companies not in Israel is really immaterial, that people who do remote jobs should have a sense of community. And I think that it has to be key. Right now, we don't have enough co-working spaces in Jerusalem that are affordable, especially ones that you might have, let's say a private office, but shared spaces. And WeWork, it's something like 4,000 shekels a month. It's not affordable for most people in Jerusalem who might just be getting by anyway. Certainly not affordable for me to pay that kind of money for the privilege of having an office. The second thing is connectivity. I have terrible internet. This isn't just me grumbling about my personal bad internet connection. It's a pain in the ass to upload stuff to YouTube, but this has been a picture that I've seen throughout my time in Jerusalem. We have Laos DSL internet. Now, there is fiber optic internet, but the deployment is not happening anywhere near as successfully as politicians would have you to believe. It's sluggish and there's still wide spaces. I live in the center of Jerusalem and there is no fiber optic from any provider on the street. So I use DSL and it's a disaster. When I upload stuff, it takes down the network. So I have to coordinate my YouTube uploading to when my wife isn't on a Zoom call. And if she's doing a Zoom call, she has to go on a hotspot or I have to go on a hotspot. It's a joke. In the year 2023, crappy, slow DSL internet needs to not be a thing anymore. And we need to get fiber optic connectivity to every street in the capital city of Israel quickly. It's a joke that in 2023, there's large swathes of the capital city of Israel, where in the high tech economy, the epicenter of the high tech economy where there is no fiber internet, that needs to be a priority, in my opinion. Okay, challenge two, unaffordable housing. The huge problem in Jerusalem, renting in Jerusalem is too expensive and buying in Jerusalem is just astronomically expensive and way beyond the means of most people, most regular young people like me who make normal salaries. The only way that I could amass the equity needed to buy a place in Jerusalem is either with the support of family or if I sold a startup for millions of dollars. The amount of equity people need to get is something like $200,000 to get another property ladder. That's just for the down payment. It is crazy, crazy, crazy. So we're seeing right now the kind of sickening phenomenon of there being a housing bubble in Jerusalem, but all the housing being built is for, I hate to use the term rich people because it's lazy, but luxury housing for the very well financially endowed who only come and these are Jews living abroad, who only come to Jerusalem for a few weeks out of the year. So we're seeing this perverse phenomenon going on in which there's loads of building in Jerusalem and none of it is stuff that local residents have any reasonable prospect of affording. That needs to change. So, you know, mechanism, this isn't really my area of expertise, punitive taxes for non-owners or mandating maximum fees on the part of developers so that a house is affordable to a local resident. Again, I'm not an expert on this by any means. So that's housing policy is totally something beyond my area of expertise. But that's just as someone living in the city. I see repeatedly all my friends moving out of the city to, if they have any connection to Jerusalem, they're moving out of the city to Bechemish, Sur Hadassah places like this because they can afford to buy there and they commute into and out of Jerusalem. But buying in Jerusalem itself has become astronomically difficult. Challenge three is security. There are just a ton of lone wolf attacks in Jerusalem, stabbings and whatever that just don't make the international news. They're going on at a trickle, but they happen and they have not been happening. Why do they happen? No one likes to talk about this because it's not politically correct. They happen in large part because East Jerusalem is totally open to West Jerusalem. There is no border. The security fence is around East Jerusalem, disconnecting it from the Palestinian authority. But between East and West Jerusalem, you have a hostile, largely in large part and some part hostile Arab population and a Jewish population and that hostile elements within the Arab population move into West Jerusalem and stab people. Repeatedly, we've seen attacks from East Jerusalem residents in West Jerusalem. Now, what's the solution to this? This is again another one of the pools where I don't have relevant expertise to offer. This is a question for security people. One of the ideas that's been floated is putting up a border between East and West Jerusalem. So that another wall, so that those people, there are checkpoints to prevent the, as we've seen the success of the checkpoint system and the barrier system in the West Bank, that we would see a similar phenomenon in East Jerusalem. The problem is for the patriotic or the more Zionistic Jews, they would see that. Putting up a wall as conceding territory in Jerusalem to the Palestinians, to the Arabs, right? If you wall it off, it's like saying, well, that's your turf. This is my turf. We agreed upon a border and therefore they oppose that. So it's a really sticky question, but something does have to be done. Otherwise, it's just a fact of life living in Jerusalem that there is a knife attack every few days. And that's very unpleasant. All right, that's going to wrap up today. I see I'm almost at 20 minutes of jabbering here, but I hope that's been interesting. If you have thoughts, leave them in the comments and, you know, give me ideas as well for other videos of me just chatting into my webcam after my morning coffee. Thanks for watching today's video. Subscribe for more and until the next one.