Institutionalized duping

It's both distressing and disappointing that so many well intentioned and intelligent people have jumped on the ADI bandwagon.

To advance their own worthy goals, they partner with an enterprise that discriminates against people with disabilities, separates them from families and communities and denies them their most basic human rights.

When uninformed donors are duped by ADI's incessant mouthing of the words "inclusion" and "respect", we can, to a certain extent, forgive them. After all, duping is what ADI's PR teams excel at. Donors are led to believe that their dollars are actually benefiting the residents locked up in ADI's institutions.

But when researchers and academics fall prey to ADI's misrepresentations, it's harder to excuse.

One such ADI partner is an esteemed researcher from Ben Gurion University. In this clip Simona Bar Haim, Executive Director of ‘The Negev Lab,’ explains the vision of the new Translational Research Center at ADI Negev-Nahalat Eran.

"Through partnerships with Ben-Gurion University, the Shirley Ryan Ability Lab, Johns Hopkins University, the Sheba Medical Center, the Weizmann Institute, and the Irbid National University in Jordan, researchers at The Negev Lab are studying the trauma and recovery of everything from car accidents to COVID-19," she tells us, adding: "In addition to enhancing care at ADI Negev-Nahalat Eran through the immediate implementation of research findings, the research will also be shared with hospitals across the country and around the world to improve global best practices – changing the face of rehabilitative care in Israel and beyond."

The accompanying text refers to ADI's large, closed, isolated institution as "a home and family for more than 150 children and young adults."

The violation of their rights is mentioned nowhere in her presentation.

For those of you who are interested in that aspect of institutionalization, I recommend speaking - as I have - to parents of children who have been abused in closed institutions. 

Recently, one such mother poured her heart out to me while I overheard her cognitively-impaired adult child, whom she had returned home hours earlier, saying repeatedly, "He hit me! He hit me!"