Israel is seriously considering legalized gambling and has named a special committee to recommend how it can be introduced and regulated.
Finance Minister Shimon Peres has appointed retired Tel Aviv District Court Judge Binyamin Cohen to head the panel. Asher Arian, a senior economist at the Finance Ministry, will serve as secretary.
The committee will study various initiatives to set up casinos in Eilat or other holiday resorts and to introduce horse racing. It also will review the two existing gambling outlets: the Mifal Hapayis lottery and the Sportoto weekly soccer pool.
According to Yitzhak Feinberg, director of the Council for Sports Gambling, which runs the soccer pool, Sportoto and Mifal Hapayis generate a combined annual revenue of about $400 million. The money is channeled into sports and educational facilities around the country.
The pool and the lottery provide virtually the only approved outlets for the gambling urge. Both are publicly supervised under existing laws.
Gambling casinos are illegal in Israel. There have been attempts to establish off-shore casinos in pleasure boats anchored off the beach at Eilat.
The panel also will look into the charity raffles run by non-profit organizations, such as the Magen David Adom, which raffles off dozens of cars each year, and the promotional raffles by the mass-circulation newspapers.
JTA has documented Jewish history in real-time for over a century. Keep our journalism strong by joining us in supporting independent, award-winning reporting.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
