Cabinet Approves Tax Hikes and Budget Cuts

The Cabinet voted to increase the VAT tax and income taxes on some segments of the population in light of a projected budget shortfall. The Knesset still needs to discuss it.

According to Israel Hayom:

The new measures include raising income tax by 1 percentage point on monthly salaries exceeding the national average of 8,881 shekels ($2,198) in 2013. Taxes on monthly salaries of over 67,000 shekels will go up 2 percentage points. Income tax rates in Israel range from 10% to 48%.

Value added tax is also set to rise to 17% from 16% on Aug. 1, most government ministries' budgets will be trimmed by 5% and the tax authority will be cracking down on tax evaders to collect billions of shekels. Finance Minister Yuval Steinitz also ordered immediate tax hikes on cigarettes and beer, which went into effect last week.

Knesset Proposes Bill to End Domestic Fur Sales

The JPost reported on a proposed bill to make Israel the first country to ban fur sales nationally. Due to Israel's generally warm climate I'm not sure this will be a big issue for most people. In case you are wondering, there is a carve-out for shtreimels, the fur has worn by many chassidic Jews. Also, fur imports will still be permitted. 

For a related story, see here and here about the court fight regarding an Israeli company's export of macaque monkeys to the US for biomedical research. In that case, the Supreme Court allowed the company to export only the monkeys that were raised in captivity but not those captured in the wild. However, El Al, Israel's national airlines, in response to public pressure said that it would not transport monkeys for the purposes of experimentation.

Also, another JPost article reports that the Cabinet recently approved a measure prohibiting chicken farmers from starving hens in order to encourage them to lay more eggs, a process known as forced molting, beginning January 1, 2013. Also, the sizes of battery cages will have to be increased to bring Israel in line with European standards. **And an article from the JPost on August 19, reports that a raid on a pig farm also found inhumane conditions as well as potential violations concerning the pollution of groundwater from swine refuse. Apparently the laws on pig farming are fairly lax.**


For information on the Jewish law view of animal rights see the blog
Animals in Halacha run by an Orthodox Jewish veterinarian and the article here and the article entitled Animal Experimentation by Rabbi Alfred S. Cohen  here. This is Rabbi Cohen's conclusion:

Despite some disagreement as to the status of the prohibition of causing pain to animals - whether of biblical or rabbinic origin - virtually all rabbis agree that it is permitted to perform experiments on animals if the intention is to benefit humans. But that is not a blanket permit: although it is permitted In this case to cause pain to the animal, it is only "דרכו של איניש בכך" if it occurs because of "something which people customarily do." What this limitation means in practical terms is not clear. It is of course understood that at all times, a person must be careful to minimize the animal's pain as far as possible. There are other objections which may place a legitimate brake on animal experimentation. There are scientists who claim that some of the uses of animals in scientific studies are not needed, because the same results could be achieved without involving animals. Also, some destruction of animal life is wanton waste, tests performed for trivial purposes. These things would not be permitted under Jewish law. In addition, there is the fact that experiments are duplicated or triplicated in dozens of laboratories around the country and around the world, thus entailing massive loss of animal life. Given the ready access which scientists the world around have to each other's studies, the halacha could not countenance many experiments which do not really serve a worthwhile purpose but only repeat what has been done elsewhere.

Other scientific "advances" may also be barred by Jewish law simply because the discomfort they cause animals is too great for the negligible benefit to man. In this vein, R. Moshe Feinstein castigates the modern practice of penning up animals so that they can hardly move about as well as "fattening calves [with chemically doctored foods] in such a way that their flesh develops a white appearance." (White veal is considered preferable to dark veal). He denounces these practices as reprehensible.

What emerges from all this is that we cannot establish a firm ruling on the question of using animals in scientific experiments. Although in general, halacha condones causing pain to an animal if a person will benefit therefrom, that little "if" leaves a great deal to be determined. Much depends on the need and the circumstances, on the pain to the animal and the expected gain to humanity. This is a determination which the individual experimenter cannot make for himself but which must be addressed on an ad-hoc basis. As the horizons of scientific study expand, the need for further halachic guidelines grows.

Israel Updates its Computer Law to Comply with the Budapest Convention

Last week Israel amended its Computer Law to bring it in line with the Budapest Convention on Cybercrime. The Knesset created a new Section 6 to replace the old one. The new Section 6 makes it a crime to write or distribute software to infiltrate another's computer or or cause that computer to print false information, or whose purpose is to infringe on another's privacy or conduct eavesdropping even without actually causing harm or interference with the compromised system. It also tracks the Budapest Convention in requiring intent for the crimes listed in Section 6.


I couldn't find an English translation of the Computer Law online, so I am providing a translation that I (and Google) made after the jump.


For articles on Israel's Computers Law see this by Ruth Levush who apparently is the Law Library of Congress' Israel law expert, and an article called Computer Legislation: Israel's New Codified Approach from 1996 written by one of the law's drafters, Miguel Deutch, but not freely available online, and here and here for articles relevant to this topic. Bear in mind, however, that all of these sources in addressing Section 6, are addressing the old Section 6.

Adopted Children Granted Same Rights of Inheritance as Biological Children

The Knesset passed an amendment to section 16 of the Inheritance Law- 1965 equating adopted children to biological children by granting adopted children the right to inherit from their adoptive parents' relatives and granting the adoptive parents' relatives the right to inherit from the adopted child.

One interesting thing in the law (not as a result of the amendment) is that adopted children can inherit from both their biological and adoptive parents. Should adopted children be limited to inheriting from only one set of parents?

Note- This law only sets up the default inheritance rules but if someone wrote a valid will, that would control. There is nothing that would prevent a child from inheriting from 3 sets of parents via 3 separate wills.

Israel Enacts Patent Amendments

One of the major aspects of the new patent amendment is the change to publication of patent applications after 18 months instead of the 30 months that was previously the case.

For more on the new amendments, see the America-Israel Patent Law Blog.

Pre-Emptive Military Actions Panel Discussion

Here is a link to a panel discussion that took place at the annual Israel Bar Association meeting in July.


The panelists are listed below:

Biometric Database Plan to Undergo Further Review

An article in the JPost reports that the Interior Ministry agreed to review its plan for a pilot biometric database to investigate some of the security concerns it has raised.


According to the article, Israel is the second democratic country (Spain being the first) to create a biometric database of its citizens. However, India, is also in the middle of collecting biometric data including iris scans, facial images, and fingerprints from its 1.2 billion citizens, although there are concerns about privacy there as well. (See the articles from the Economist, and NY Times.)  Morpho, a company involved in the Indian data collection process is also providing Israel's airports with security equipment and its explosive detection system is being used by the Prime Minister's Office. In France, the constitutional court ruled earlier this year that a law proposing a centralized national database containing biometric data was unconstitutional.


Relatedly, the Israeli Law, Information and Technology Authority (Israel’s data protection authority, “ILITA”), has issued a draft directive, regarding its stance on the Protection of Privacy Law, limiting the collection of people's teudat zehut or national identity numbers unless. Teudat zehut numbers should only be collected after the database owner whether such collection is necessary and for how long the data is required. Part of that examination entails considering whether there is a less intrusive means for identifying the data subjects. That means that when you register to join a store's customer list, they should not ask for your national ID number, instead they should provide registrants with a unique customer ID number. 

For some scholarly papers on the vulnerabilities of biometric database systems and their solutions see here, here, here and here. There is also a book published by the American Bar Association entitled The Practitioner's Guide to Biometrics, but it is basically a collection of papers on some of the problems with biometrics. I don't think it's worth the price.


One fear of biometric fingerprints is that a user can be forced to place his finger on the scanner or his finger can even be detached from his hand by malfeasants and used to gain access to sensitive information. According to one article, a German company has come up with a way to defeat the second scenario by imaging the change in skin color that occurs when a live finger is pressed against the scanner. But then there is always the problem illustrated by this (poor quality) clip from the movie National Treasure.