Aleh and food for thought

Meshi's parents interviewed in the KAN report detailed below

Just focus on the food. That’s always a safe strategy.

It's no surprise that promos for Aleh's upcoming fundraiser are heavy on the menu and light on the issues:

"Chef Ilan Garussi, chef and owner of Satya Restaurant, and Janina Bar Hama, owner of the Olmaya Hall, already began their preparations for ALEH’s Magical Gala Dinner by visiting ALEH Jerusalem to become acquainted with ALEH residents and gain some firsthand knowledge of ALEH’s amazing educational and rehabilitation activity." [From the Aleh website this week]

It's safe to presume that donors attending the Magical Gala, as Aleh calls its event, will not be exposed to any of the negatives of Aleh's institutions.

They won't, for instance, hear Naama Lerner, director of Bizchut, Israel's leading and longest running organization devoted to promoting the rights of people with disabilities. She appears on this KAN [Israel TV Channel 11] clip about the recent deaths in Israel of two young people with disabilities who resided in large, closed facilities similar to those operated by Aleh.

The journalist notes that Lerner wasn't surprised by the most recent death, that of Meshi Peretz, a resident of the Neve Ram residential institution for people with disabilities, on December 16, 2019.

Lerner (my translation from the original Hebrew) says:

"Death is the really, most extreme case. There are many, many, many problems faced by people in institutions. Let's start with the "soft" items. The "soft" items are that a person is deprived entirely of his privacy. He doesn't determine who will sleep with him in his room. He will never have a private room. People who are 20, 30, 40 years old who need a private room, personal closet, personal clothing, a moment to be alone. What do the institutions do to prevent this? They shackle them to beds, isolate them in rooms, tie them to restraint chairs, place splints on their arms so they can't move their arms. All these things are also prohibited by law."

Aleh's guests will also most certainly not have their tasty meal marred by the account of Meshi's mother of the many drugs that were administered to her daughter by that institution. Mrs. Peretz explained that she felt compelled to authorize them because if she refused and something disastrous happened to her child, wouldn't she then be blamed? How could she counter the institution's assertion that the medications were necessary?

Meshi had moved to Neve Ram two and a half years earlier. Six months into her stay, a series of hospitalizations began for bone fractures and seizures though, as her mother notes

"Our daughter was not epileptic and until she moved there we didn't know what a hospital was.”

They will probably not hear from Professor Avinoam Reches, a senior neurologist at Hadassah Medical Center and a former Chairman of the Ethics Committee of the Israel Medical Association. He explains in the KAN report (again, my translation to English) that according to hospital reports

"Meshi, an 18 year old autistic girl with cognitive impairment, arrived with a swollen stomach and on the verge of death, she was 'in sceptic shock' with no blood pressure, no pulse. Her extremities were cold so undoubtedly in the hours, the day preceding she wasn't healthy. Somebody should have checked on her. Nobody looked at her there. Nobody approached her. Nobody checked her. The doctors wrote that she had "agonal breathing", meaning she was in her final breaths. She was dying in her bed in that institution... Nobody raised a red flag."

Naama Lerner adds:

"There were deaths in institutions with question marks even before Meshi's. [For instance] Effie ben Baruch, may his memory be a blessing, whose blood had not yet dried."

Effie, an autistic young man from Bet Shean, a resident of the institution, Ramat Haifa, died five months before Meshi. (I wrote about that case in September 2019 here.)

Aleh donors will undoubtedly be spared the sobs of his mother:

"Effie was a happy boy, a delightful boy, a loving boy who caused others to love him." She breaks down, "They killed my child...The [closed circuit] cameras show that the aide choked him. [Effie also managed to tell his family that he was beaten by his caregiver at the institution. F.R.] and he lay sprawled on the sofa from 10 in the morning until the evening. They could have saved my child!" (My translation of what she said in the KAN segment.)

Dr. Reches explains the conduct of such institutions thus:

"If I were a director of a facility of this sort, I earn per capita, which means, I want to receive the payment from the Ministry of Welfare per head annually and at the same time I want to save all the expenses that I possibly can.  If I can operate a shift with one person, with one nurse, and to keep all the patients quiet with drugs, then I have earned money."

And it's safe to presume that nobody at the Aleh "Gala" will learn about the documented "choking" deaths of residents in Aleh institutions. Because the parents of those children did not publicize their tragedies, they were only sketchily reported in local newspapers in 2019 and 2000. Most citizens are unaware they occurred. (I wrote about two here.)

What I posted on my blog several months ago ["Institutions: The world goes one way, Israel and Aleh the other"] will also surely remain concealed from the Aleh supporters. Here's an excerpt:

"Some 6,100 people with cognitive developmental disabilities live in 63 dormitories... The overwhelming majority are institutions owned by private companies that naturally see before their eyes the bottom line. The above atrocities [the case of Effie ben Baruch and other cases of abuse] were committed in institutions against a background of a revolution in global awareness that is hastening an end to the locking up and isolating of people with disabilities from the community. In Western countries, the trend is towards the closure of large institutions and transfer of residents to independent living within the community... In Israel the Bizchut organization has been leading the demand for the closure of institutions, which has been ignored for many years. Only in 2011 did the Ministry of Welfare invite five international experts to draft a literature review of the transfer from dormitory residences to in-community living. 'Research findings demonstrate a clear picture: community services are more beneficial than institutional living for the totality of people with cognitive developmental disabilities', they stated."

Instead, it's a safe bet that attendees will hear that the institutionalized living option of Aleh is ideal for its residents and that no comparable alternative exists! 

Israel Prize recipient Major General Doron Almog will likely sing the praises of Aleh's largest branch, Aleh Negev, known also as Nahalat Eran after his late son who resided there from the age of 13 until his death at the age of 23 in 2007.

Who will "serve up" with that "magical" gourmet meal the "magical" message of equal rights, independence and true inclusion in the community?