Field Dossier: The Milk Cartel Cracks

Israel’s dairy reform is a fight between consumer sanity and periphery mythology — and the outcome will define whether the government can touch any protected sector at all.

On February 4, dairy farmers poured milk onto Highway 1 and hurled a statue of a cow at the Finance Ministry [at least it wasn't gilded] — to protest the possibility that the crisis, for consumers, might end. Israelis pay 64 percent above the OECD average for dairy because three companies sit behind a wall of quotas and 40 percent tariffs no competitor can breach, and Smotrich is finally trying to tear the wall down. The telecom cartel made the same arguments in 2012, lost, and bills dropped 80 percent. This is the test of whether the Israeli political system can dismantle a protected sector when the beneficiaries wrap themselves in tractors and flags — five scenarios, mapped, with the odds.

It has never needed to win the argument merely to outlast the reformer.

The Israel Brief is the Mitzpe Institute's read on Israel and the region — most mornings, Sunday through Thursday. More at mitzpe.org.