Atidim - "Avanti Popolo, Avanti popolo, bandiera rosa, bandiera rosa"

Atidim, or futures, is a program to help bright Israeli kids from the "periphery" (not the big cities) go to university and become success stories. They've been introducing this program to us the past two afternoons, and then again tomorrow and the next day. Enough introducing, time to get to work.

Israel, like America, is seeing a growing a gap in rich and poor. The socialist zionist dream is falling by the wayside. The kibbutz movement is dying. Israel gets more high-tech, more advanced, but immigrants from Ethiopia, North Africa and elsewhere continue to struggle. They keep drilling this down our throats. Atidim, a program where we help kids like these (also Bedouin and Druze kids, though not Muslim or Christian Arabs) make it by learning English, is useful, for sure. But how about the fact that people like former Finance Minister Bibi Netanyahu gave up on social democracy? Whatever happened to the Zionism of AD Gordon, David Ben Gurion, and other socialit heroes? I think Israel needs a good dose of the Italian song my mom learned at her socialist youth group: "Avanti popolo, avanti popolo, bandiera rosa, bandiera rosa." (Forward people, the red banner, or something like that).