Behind the slick PR, something disturbing at Aleh

Oops. Did the Aleh PR team goof?

It recently uploaded a video clip [here] featuring parents who handed their children over to that institution on a permanent basis. One parent's comments are so incriminating of Aleh that it leads a person to wonder whether the normally slick Aleh PR team were asleep at the wheel.

In the clip, three parents whose children live at Aleh institutions relate their decisions to remove the child from the family home.

One father says:

"When Roni was 4, my wife was killed in a car accident, Roni's mother. The phone rang. I answered and heard, "Shalom. My name is Yehuda Marmorstein, I'm CEO of Aleh. I heard about what happened to you and I want you to know that there's a place in Jerusalem where Roni can be..."

So much for the contention that parents turn to Aleh in desperation and without alternative options. This father is saying he was approached by the CEO of Aleh who urged him to hand his child over to their care. Apparently nobody from any government body or social service agency reached out to this widower with alternative solutions to his predicament. If they did, they made no impact on him because he only mentions Aleh's Rabbi Marmorstein.

The other parents, a married couple, interviewed for the clip, emphasize how helpless and incompetent many parents feel when they learn that their child has serious disabilities.

Now this is clearly a view that Aleh is keen to disseminate. But is it accurate? 

Parents' intuition about their children is a known and highly regarded phenomenon. They are rarely clueless. Quite the contrary. And with the input of professionals in school and at-home therapies, parents can equip themselves to raise even the most profoundly-disabled children in an exemplary manner.

This is a truth that Aleh seems eager to conceal. They encourage this father's sentiment:

"It's a hard decision, but we knew for sure that it was right. Part of raising a special needs child is to know when to let go. [In the video clip, Aleh translates the term "להרפות" as "to step back" but it actually means "to let go", a less palatable characteristic of institutionalization.] To know I can give her what I can give at home. And she can get the rest of what she needs somewhere else."

Another parent is quoted saying

"They know here much better than I do what he can do and how much more he can still advance in every area, whether it has to do with technology or it has to do with care".

So evidently Aleh convinces these parents of special children that, unlike the challenge of raising healthy children, this is one they are incapable of facing. 

It is a despicable message. 

I believe it is the duty of the professionals in contact with these parents to counter and even to condemn it. Clearly, in many instances, those professionals - doctors, therapists, social workers - have dropped the ball.

As one of the fathers I mentioned above wonders:

"What can you do? What treatments can you give? Where can you put him? These questions arise and there are no real answers."

Actually there are myriad real answers other than Aleh - for instance day care followed by special schools that fill a child's day with therapies and attention six days a week. His question is baffling as I know from personal experience.

A concluding line spoken by the mother of that child demonstrates how confused these parents are. She says: 

"Aleh enables a family like ours to raise their child and live a normal life. It's the right balance."

Who will enlighten her? Who will break the harsh news to her? She is not raising her child in any sense of the word. That is a mission she has abdicated.

My birthday wish is justice

March 14 is my birthday. But since last year the day has gained secondary significance in our home.

On March 14, 2017, my husband and I along with the parents of Shoshana Hayman Greenbaum were invited to meet officials of the US Department of Justice and the FBI at the King David Hotel in Jerusalem. 

Several of those representatives had periodically spoken to us, ever since PM Netanyahu decided in 2011 to free 1,027 convicted terrorists including our daughter's murderer. We had pleaded with him to exclude from that list Ahlam Tamimi, the chief orchestrator and a perpetrator of the 2001 Sbarro bombing. 

Tamimi had confessed to,  and been convicted of, the murders of 15 people, eight of them children. She had been sentenced to 16 life terms. But Mr. Netanyahu, in a move far more immoral than any of the offenses of which he is now being accused, ignored us. 

On October 18, 2011, at his instruction, Tamimi was released along with 1,026 other terrorists - more than half of whom were convicted of murder or attempted murder - in order to retrieve Gilad Shalit. 

Last year at that meeting in the King David Hotel, we received what I naively believed would be a wonderful birthday gift: the news that Ahlam Tamimi was being indicted by the US for the murders of two Americans in the Sbarro massacre. Those victims were the pregnant 31 year old only child of the Haymans. And our 15 year old child, Malki.

But within minutes, it emerged that the "gift" was a curse, a source of yet more heartache. We learned then that the US had demanded Tamimi's extradition from Jordan to stand trial on US soil only to be met with a flat refusal by King Abdullah's regime for various bogus reasons.

Jordan had signed an extradition treaty with the US in 1995 and subsequently released several Jordanians to US custody in accordance with that same agreement. In the case of Tamimi, a woman of near-iconic stature in that country, Jordan behaves as if none of that ever happened.

Since March 14, 2017, we have discovered another painful reality: the United States appears unwilling to risk jeopardizing its friendship with Jordan's King Abdullah. It has avoided pressuring the king to buttress with actions his incessant chirping about "fighting terrorism". 

From the FBI Most Wanted
Terrorists website

He is lauded by both the US and Israel for being a staunch enemy of terrorists while harboring Tamimi, a mass-murdering Hamas agent. 

Through her Al QudsTV talk show, which she hosted until shortly before her US indictment, she has been brazenly inciting Muslims to the murder of more Jews. In speeches she has delivered throughout the Arab world she has boasted of her "accomplishments" and urged her fans to emulate them.

So as on every birthday since Mr. Netanyahu's infamous Shalit Deal, I pray and wish for the day that my Malki's murder will receive the just end it demands - Ahlam Tamimi behind US prison bars for life.

[A version of this piece was originally published in Times of Israel on March 14, 2018.]

On the backs of children with disabilities: 3 Aleh tales

The caption on the original reads: "The prisoners

shed their uniforms before arriving at ALEH to volunteer."
[Image Source]

One

Aleh has been congratulating itself for a program that it boasts rehabilitates felons. Only it does so on the backs of children and adults with severe disabilities.

It is now abundantly clear how respected this program is elsewhere: since its launch in 2008, no other institution has copied it anywhere in the world! This has been verified by the International Corrections and Prison Association ("ICPA"), an NGO in Special Consultative Status with the Economic and Social Council of the United Nations. 

In 2011, ICPA bestowed the Offender Management and Reintegration Award on that Aleh program. But when contacted, the ICPA could not name another such program in any other prison. For corroboration it referred me to the Israel Prisons Service. 

Here is their response:

Dear Frimet Roth
I received your question from Fraser Brayns [of the ICPA]
As you know, this is a unique project that was initiated at the Israel prison service.
I asked around and we are not familiar with similar projects that are currently being implemented in other countries. [Emphasis added - FR]
Please don't hesitate to contact me on any further question.
Best wishes
Abigael 

(I first reported this is December 2016. See this post.)

Aleh Negev itself conceded that this is not exactly a safe model: none of the prisoners bussed there several times a week is allowed contact with any female or any minor Aleh residents. Nor may they enter the institution's therapy pool. 

No puzzle here. These are not ex-convicts but men who have not yet served out their sentences which, by Aleh's account, can even top seven years in prison. Israel's justice system does not impose terms that long for mild offenses. 

But what is infuriating is that those same prisoners are deemed by Aleh harmless enough to remove their prison garb, blend in with the staff and engage in one-on-one contact with its vulnerable male residents.

Two

We've been reminded by our State Attorney Shai Nitzan (as I wrote in "Is this why our government loves Aleh?") that Israel's resource-deprived southern periphery is blessed by the employment opportunities provided by those same citizens with disabilities

Twelve years ago, I wrote ["Institutionalization isn't the answer", Jerusalem Post, June 28, 2006] about the then-nascent Aleh Negev project that Aleh's promoters had snared 46.5 million taxpayers' shekels and 100 dunams of public land. 

The bait included 500 jobs to boost the ailing Negev economy; creating lucrative on-site businesses including a coffee company; a for-profit paramedical therapies center; and opportunities for local high school students to earn matriculation points by volunteering.

The CEO at the time of Bizchut, the Center for Human Rights of People with Disabilities, Sylvia Tessler-Lazovic, wrote a scathing critique (in Hebrew, here) of Aleh Negev in reaction to the 2003 groundbreaking ceremony:

The Israeli government is allegedly demonstrating social sensitivity of the first degree in building a magnificent village for one of society's "weakest" populations. In a period of severe financial shortage, the government is withholding no professional or monetary resources from this group, allots a large tract of land for the construction of the village and develops a grand plan for it. It appears that its residents will receive the best care that money can buy. Establishing the village will also bring salvation to the unemployment struck desert by providing 500 jobs to operate it. In this article I intend to show that the decision to build this village doesn't show social sensitivity at all but is tainted with extreme immorality that opposes the rights of people with disabilities to equality and is illegal. [Translated to English by me.]

Illustrative [Image Source]

Three

And now, this month, we've been informed that on the backs of Aleh residents, other citizens with disabilities are being employed - as gardeners on the Aleh Negev grounds: "New ALEH Program Creates Equal Employment Opportunities", February 19, 2018.

In this latest ruse, people with disabilities are being used at both ends - they create the jobs and they fill them. 

For an overview of my general critique of Aleh's approach - its methodology, its funding, its public relations -  see "Disabled: The pursuit of housing equality for Israel’s underclass" [Times of Israel, August 11, 2013]

The message must be reiterated loud and clear. Regardless of the benefits derived for the rest of society, locking up and isolating our children with disabilities is not OK.

Welcome to "quality" special education in Jerusalem

I gave a "tremp" yesterday to a woman I recognized from my daughter Chaya's "alma mater".

Of course, I grabbed the opportunity to inquire about the state of the school since C.'s graduation. It had switched, at that time, from the province of an amuta to that of the Ministry of Education. I was curious about the impact that transfer had had. 

The woman couldn't stop gushing about the change. When I asked for details, she noted "various benefits and gifts to the staff" including a reduction in work days from six to 5 per week for teacher's aides, which she is. 

All in all, she concluded, "things are great". 

Then I asked her what the administrative switch had done for the children. Were they receiving more therapies, for instance? (While Chaya attended, the number of therapies per week was piddling. At best, one half hour session per week of physio, occupational, speech therapy and hydrotherapy.)

But rarely if ever did all those eventuate. Therapists would be out for myriad reasons and staff meetings were always held during therapy hours. 

"No", she replied, unhesitatingly. "They receive fewer therapies. 

"But everybody seems pleased," she added. "I haven't heard any parents complaining". 

I choked... This woman was praising the new administration despite its harm to the children. And those children are entrusted to her care. 

Not very reassuring, to put it mildly.

PS We didn't manage to get to the neurologist this week as we had intended. But for now we aren't feeling the urgency.  Chaya has grown weary of that mysterious vomiting and has even cut back on her central fevers. My husband plans to meet the neurologist next week to discuss strategies for reducing seizures, He'll go without Chaya since she's been thoroughly examined by the pediatrician just last week. Yeah, I know, we never seem to give up the fight.