Waiting for a wheelchair - and a bizarre partnership

Chaya in her old (and current)
wheelchair

It's been six months since we lodged all the paperwork necessary to convince the Ministry of Health to approve a new, subsidized wheelchair for my daughter Chaya.

In the meantime, she continues to spend most of her waking hours in the ill-suited, uncomfortable wheelchair selected for us by the "seating expert"/physio-theraist in her school ten years ago. 

At our request, our current seating expert (she works at a rehabilitative hospital) who selected the new wheelchair inquired again about the delay. She wrote us that the reply from the Ministry of Health was:

"The treatment requested has been delayed and that they promised to hurry."

Now, even if a wheelchair were delivered to our door tomorrow, it couldn't count as "hurrying". Of course, we are bracing ourselves for a further interminable wait.

And after a two week phone pursuit, we finally landed the physiotherapist from our Kupat Holim (health fund). He showed up last week and put Chaya through his routine of extremity stretches, advising us to do them with her every day. He said he would return in a month since we're only entitled to 12 sessions per year from the Kupah.

When my husband requested that he recommend hydrotherapy for Chaya, he poo-pooed its benefits since, after all, Chaya "doesn't live in water". That's the same response, verbatim, that he gave us a year ago. 

Chaya in the hands of the Kupah
physiotherapist

So once again, my husband patiently educated him about the phenomenal benefits our daughter derives from hydrotherapy. And once again, he agreed to recommend that the Kupah allot her their maximum of 6 sessions.

That's per year! (Note: Chaya can't get any hydro from the Kupah without his recommendation).

Yes, it is somewhat Kafkaesque trying to keep your severely disabled child at home rather than locking her away in an institution. This is particularly true in a country as enamored with the institutionalization of people with disabilities as Israel is.

I was shocked to learn this week that Israel admits representative of Aleh, Israel’s leading chain of large, closed institutions, into our school classrooms to "educate" pupils about disabilities. So, we have our most impressionable population being taught that "inclusion" equals isolating people with disabilities from both families and communities.

Here is what Aleh's website says about that brainwashing program:

“We couldn’t be prouder of this program, which is the fulfillment of a dream for ALEH. Working together with the Ministry of Education, we are educating towards change on a grand scale and seeing immediate results countrywide,” said Avi Wortzman, Director General of ALEH’s rehabilitative village in the Negev and the brains behind the Tikkun Olam program.

The benefit that he raved about was "a noticeable spike in youth-led volunteerism and social activism initiatives."

My apoplexy peaked when I read that

"to increase Tikkun Olam’s geographic reach and professional depth, ALEH partnered with non-profit organizations Makom L’Kulam (“A Place for Everyone”) and Negishut Yisrael (“Access Israel”), both leading voices in the fight for disability rights in Israel." [Source]

Et tu, advocates for the disabled?

I have written to Makom L'Kulam about this bizarre partnership. I will share with you any response I receive from them.

For too many, a deal that is forgotten history

As many readers of my occasional articles will probably know, the Shalit Deal haunts me every day. It constitutes what was probably the worst travesty of justice ever perpetrated by an Israeli leader. And it resulted in the freedom of Ahlam Tamimi, my daughter Malki’s murderer in the Sbarro massacre.

Thanks to that outrage, Tamimi lives a comfortable life in Amman, Jordan, where she brazenly incites millions of Muslims to terrorism with utter impunity [see “21-Nov-17: Mass-murdering Charles Manson and mass-murdering Ahlam Tamimi: Who’s more monstrous?”]

For most Israelis, however, the Shalit Deal is forgotten history.

Nevertheless, for several hours last week, the local press was abuzz with it courtesy of ex- Prime Minister Ehud Olmert. Speaking publicly for the first time since his release from prison six months ago, Olmert didn’t mince any words lambasting the deal and its orchestrator, Netanyahu. He was addressing a conference at Tel Aviv’s Museum of the Jewish People at Beit Hatefutsot, organized by the not-for- profit “Arik for Leadership” society, named for the late prime minister Ariel Sharon. The conference marked the 70th anniversary of the Battle of Latrun.

Olmert’s speech made me yearn for the bad old days when we were led by a man, Olmert, who was subsequently convicted of and imprisoned for the crime of corruption. I know, I know – that sounds absurd. But it’s undeniable: the ex-criminal spoke sanely and rationally about the release of the Shalit Deal’s 1,027 terrorists, among them convicted murderers and mass murderers, in return for one Israeli soldier. His words were such sweet music to my ears that I’m compelled to share some of them.

He revealed that he had rejected far milder demands from Hamas for Gilad Shalit’s release than those to which Netanyahu ultimately submitted in 2011:

“It is difficult to speak about the price we paid. The price that I rejected was lower both in the number of those released and in their characteristics [caliber]”.

He said that as PM he had several conversations with Gilad Shalit’s parents but said he always told them:

“You are the parents, you can ask to release not a thousand, but ten thousand. It’s human and understandable. But I as prime minister won’t do that. From a prime minister’s viewpoint, things must be looked at in a different way.”

Admittedly, Olmert wasn’t subjected to the intense pressure of an unhinged psy-cho-lo-gist/wife intent on pleasing her friends, the Shalits. As we know, Netanyahu had no such luck. In 2012, he openly confessed to the German newspaper, Bild, that his decision to buckle under to Hamas’ demands was influenced by Sara’s pressure to do so.

It is also important to remember that PM Netanayahu failed not only by brokering that egregiously lopsided swap. The very day of the mass release in October 2011, shocking revelations were reported regarding intelligence gathering related to Shalit’s abduction. Their source was a then freshly-retired senior commander in IDF counter-terrorism intelligence, Colonel Ronen Cohen. He had most recently been the intelligence officer of Central Command.

In an interview published on October 16, 2011 [Haaretz, “Former IDF Official: Shalit Rescue Efforts Were ‘A Resounding Failure’”], Cohen said that the deal constituted “a resounding failure” adding

“The IDF never took responsibility for the soldier and did not even set up a team to deal with bringing him back… Intelligence is not passive but must be activated. [In the Shalit case,] it never was.”

And on whose watch did all those blunders occur? On whose watch have at least six more Israelis been murdered by terrorists released in the Shalit Deal?

The same leader who is now entrusted with our welfare in the days ahead; days that don’t augur calm or safety.

[A version of this post was published on the Times of Israel website under the headline "The Shalit deal redux" on February 12, 2018]