The Media Line: ‘6 out of 10’: How Elkin’s Remark Framed a Broader Debate on Israel’s Civilian Reality 

‘6 out of 10’: How Elkin’s Remark Framed a Broader Debate on Israel’s Civilian Reality  

From a rare ministerial assessment to debates on finance, credit, and governance, a Tel Aviv forum revealed how Israel is navigating civilian challenges that extend well beyond the battlefield 

By Gabriel Colodro / The Media Line  

When Israel’s minister responsible for national reconstruction graded the government’s performance in the north as “six out of ten,” the remark resonated well beyond the room in which it was delivered. The assessment stood out not for its bluntness but for what it captured: a growing recognition across Israel’s political, financial, and civic spheres that the country’s civilian systems are operating under sustained strain, relying increasingly on improvised mechanisms rather than durable frameworks. 

The comment came during a wide-ranging economic forum in Tel Aviv that brought together cabinet ministers, opposition leaders, regulators, financiers, and civil society figures to discuss Israel’s post–Oct. 7 reality. While speakers approached different sectors, the diagnosis repeatedly converged. Israel has resources, talent, and resilience. What it increasingly lacks, many argued, are systems able to move quickly, coordinate across institutions, and absorb prolonged civilian crises without bypassing their own rules. 

The discussion was convened by Ogen, a nonprofit financial institution that operates alongside Israel’s commercial banking system, providing credit and financial tools to households, small businesses, nonprofit organizations, and local initiatives that often fall outside traditional banking criteria. Its role in the debate was not ideological, nor was it presented as a solution in itself. Rather, its presence reflected a structural reality; when state mechanisms move slowly, and markets prioritize low-risk clients, alternative financial actors become central to civilian recovery by default. 

That reality was articulated early through interviews conducted alongside the conference. Speaking with The Media Line, Eldan Kaye, vice president of Ogen, described how Israel’s social and economic gaps are not the result of a single policy failure but of an accumulated absence of scalable tools.  

“The gaps and the market failures in Israel are so wide that philanthropy alone cannot solve them,” Kaye said, explaining that in many comparable countries, governments actively incentivize banks, nonprofits, and investors to share risk and expand access to credit. In Israel, he said, that role has largely been missing, forcing civil actors to assemble parallel frameworks from scratch. 

It was in that context, Kaye explained, that Ogen’s long-term effort to establish a social bank took shape. The idea, first articulated years ago, was driven by a structural limitation. As a nonprofit lender, Ogen could extend loans and deploy philanthropic capital, but it could not accept deposits or operate at the scale required to meet nationwide demand. A bank, Kaye said, would change that equation by enabling Ogen to mobilize far larger pools of capital and provide full banking services to populations systematically underserved by the existing system. Unlike commercial banks, the proposed model would operate without a profit distribution imperative, prioritizing sustainability and impact over shareholder returns. The aim, he said, is not to compete for high-end clients but to serve middle and lower-income families, small businesses, reservists, and peripheral communities the system consistently leaves behind. 

Those ambitions were tested immediately after Oct. 7. Nearly 40% of Ogen’s staff were themselves affected by evacuations, reserve duty, or family displacement, pushing the organization into what Kaye described as a financial first-responder role. Immediate liquidity was extended to families and businesses simply to keep them afloat. Over time, that emergency posture evolved into a longer-term rebuilding effort, combining loans with financial coaching, vocational training, debt restructuring, and assistance with navigating state benefits. “We’re not in the aftermath,” he said. “But we’re no longer in the emergency phase either. We’re rebuilding from the bottom up.” 

The consequences of institutional gaps are most visible in communities where exclusion from formal systems has long been normalized. Speaking with The Media Line, Khaled Hassan, who leads Ogen’s work with Arab society and economic development initiatives, described how access to credit has become a decisive factor in whether economic progress translates into social stability. Over the past decade, he said, higher education levels and workforce participation, especially among women, have risen significantly. At the same time, crime and violence have escalated. “One trend does not cancel the other,” Hassan said. “There is one tool that can ensure continued growth and also help eliminate crime and violence, and that is access to credit.” 

Hassan said the gap is visible in how the financial system speaks, or fails to speak, to Arab consumers. When mainstream banking does not invest in presence, outreach, and tailored products, he argued, it is not only excluding borrowers but abandoning a growing market with clear business potential. The result, he warned, is predictable: “When there is no access to credit, someone else enters the vacuum,” pushing families and entrepreneurs toward informal lenders and, in some cases, the criminal economy. 

These dynamics extend beyond any single sector. Small businesses weakened by the COVID crisis were hit again by the war. Reservist families lost months of income while expenses accumulated. From the perspective of commercial banks, many of these borrowers appeared high-risk. From the state’s perspective, responses were often slow and constrained by rigid eligibility criteria. The result was a widening gap between need and access, increasingly filled by nonprofit and municipal mechanisms. 

It was against this backdrop that Zeev Elkin, Israel’s minister overseeing the government’s national reconstruction portfolio—including recovery planning for communities affected in the north and south—offered one of the most candid assessments heard from within the coalition. His remarks carried unusual weight because they came from inside the government, not from its critics. Asked to evaluate the government’s handling of recovery efforts in the north, Elkin did not deflect. “I’d give it a six out of ten,” he said, adding that criticism of the government was justified and that responsibility ultimately rested with him. 

Elkin argued that Israel does not lack intentions or funding, but the tools required to manage a prolonged civilian emergency. “There is a real gap, not in intentions, but in systems,” he said. “The State of Israel is not prepared to manage a civilian emergency with the tools it currently has.” He described a government built for routine governance attempting to navigate a nonroutine disaster, where bureaucratic rules designed to ensure oversight and equality become obstacles when speed and flexibility are required.  

Unlike the South, the North never received a dedicated reconstruction law after Oct. 7, leaving billions of shekels frozen for legal reasons even as communities remained displaced. “The money existed,” he said. “Without the legal framework, nothing could move.” Rebuilding, he warned, could not mean restoring the prewar status quo. “If the goal is only to return to what existed before, then we really didn’t change reality.” 

From the opposition, Avigdor Lieberman, a former defense minister and current Knesset member, offered a harsher reading of the same moment. Israel, he warned, was drifting back toward the mindset that preceded Oct. 7. “When I look at what is happening now, we have returned to Oct. 6,” Lieberman said, arguing that Hamas was regaining strength and that Qatar had resumed its role as an intermediary.  

More troubling, he said, was the decision-making process itself. “There was no discussion in the Cabinet or in any formal forum about transferring money,” Lieberman said, describing what he claimed was a policy initiated at the prime ministerial level and framed explicitly as a way to buy calm. 

Lieberman linked that critique to broader structural questions of equality and sustainability. “Equality in sharing the burden goes far beyond military service,” he said, pointing to labor force participation, productivity, and regional disparities. Subsidies to the ultra-Orthodox sector, he argued, had reached unsustainable levels, while peripheral regions, particularly in the north, were being obscured by political messaging rather than addressed through measurable recovery indicators. 

Those tensions resurfaced during a public debate between Avi Simhon, head of Israel’s National Economic Council, and Eyal Waldman, founder of Mellanox, in which disagreements over taxation, labor participation, corruption, and state priorities exposed deeper fractures in Israel’s economic direction. While Simhon defended fiscal discipline and gradual reform, Waldman accused the state of eroding trust and undermining the human capital on which Israel’s economy depends. 

At the regulatory level, Daniel Hahiashvili described a financial system whose concentration shapes outcomes before policy enters the picture. With only eight banks serving a population of roughly 10 million, competition remains limited, and incentives favor strong borrowers. The result, he said, is a system that functions efficiently for some while leaving hundreds of thousands without full access to basic financial services. 

A parallel perspective came from Mifal HaPais, Israel’s national lottery and one of the country’s largest sources of funding for municipal infrastructure, education, culture, and public facilities. Mifal HaPais operates under a government license that requires all profits to be redistributed to public purposes, primarily through local authorities, with allocation formulas based on population size, socioeconomic ranking, and geographic peripherality. 

Speaking with The Media Line, Victor Weiss, the organization’s chief financial officer, described how close ties to local authorities enabled faster responses than centralized state mechanisms after Oct. 7. While revenues initially fell as parts of the country shut down, the organization relied on direct input from mayors to identify urgent needs that national criteria often failed to capture.  

Protective equipment for emergency squads, fortified classrooms, support for evacuees, agricultural labor programs, student scholarships tied to volunteering, and later trauma and resilience initiatives were deployed not because they fit predefined categories, but because local leaders identified them as critical. 

Weiss also acknowledged the tension inherent in operating a gambling-based revenue model during a period of national trauma. Stress and uncertainty, he noted, increase the risk of addiction, prompting expanded investment in responsible gaming and trauma treatment programs. The experience broadened the organization’s understanding of its role—from funding physical infrastructure to supporting social resilience and recovery networks. 

Across the forum and the interviews conducted alongside it, a consistent pattern emerged. Israel’s recovery has depended less on comprehensive national frameworks than on actors capable of bypassing them. Elkin himself acknowledged that reality, arguing that once the immediate crisis subsides, Israel must establish permanent civilian emergency mechanisms that cut through bureaucracy and allow rapid decision-making. Without such reform, he warned, the next crisis will expose the same institutional failures. 

What the discussions ultimately revealed was not a celebration of civil society stepping in, but a warning about what that necessity implies. Capacity exists, but it is uneven, dependent on nonprofit finance, municipal improvisation, and alternative credit models rather than law.  

Israel’s challenge now is not only rebuilding what was damaged, but deciding whether it is willing to reform the systems that made rebuilding so difficult—or whether it will continue relying on parallel institutions to do what the state itself increasingly admits it is not equipped to deliver.