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| Shai visits Aleh Jerusalem 2018 |
I was first introduced to Knesset member Dr Nachman Shai when Bizchut (“Promoting the rights of people who have disabilities
in Israel”) paired
me up with him to pay
a joint surprise visit
to a large, closed Jerusalem institution
for children and adults with disabilities.
Across the country on
that same day, other such facilities were similarly inspected. The reason for
having activists accompanied by Knesset members was that the latter can legally
insist on admittance to those institutions. Civilians, like me, are almost
always denied entry.
I certainly was, anytime I previously tried.
After the tours, each Knesset member's impressions were recorded on video. Shai astounded me with his
praise for the institution. He was well aware that Bizchut and
other activists, some with disabilities themselves, were intent on replacing institutionalization
with in-community living for everyone.
Nevertheless he emerged with this reaction:
"I believe I am leaving with a
good impression, a positive impression... We toured from top to bottom, the
institution was open... We
were not prevented from
viewing anything, everything we requested we received and I leave as much as
possible with a good feeling." (My translation of his Hebrew as recorded at the time.)
Shai had entirely missed the point.
People with disabilities are often locked up in “gilded prisons”. Their human rights are
denied, the love of family and home stolen from them. Funding which our government could and should
channel to parents and children with disabilities is lavished on institution operators.
The rest of the Western world has, as a universally agreed matter of strategy,
abandoned the institutionalization
of people with disabilities over the
past two decades. But Israel persists in supporting,
funding and promoting it for its population with disabilities.
Standing
outside that institution on the day of that visit, Shai
briefly related to that
"debate", as he called it, and said he intended to leave it at that.
On April 20, 2022, a
demonstration will be held at Tel Aviv's Kikar Habima at 16:00. In the Passover
spirit, it
is being called "Our Exodus
to Freedom - From Institutions into the Community".
Nachman Shai
just didn't get it.
Last
week, he missed
another crucial point again. And just as egregiously.
Here is how he is
quoted by Michael Freund in an opinion piece [source: The Jerusalem Post]:
In an interview on Army
Radio on March 30, he asserted that “hungry people turn to terrorism. Without
food and water, they will disrupt our lives... this
contention simply does not stand up under further scrutiny. To
begin with, consider the fact that according to the World Bank, there are
approximately 700 million people on the planet living in what is described as
“extreme poverty,” which is defined as earning less than $1.90 a day. That is
nearly 10% of the world’s population...
If the simple equation that suggests that poverty directly gives rise to
terrorism were true, one would expect to find millions of people, if not more,
taking up arms worldwide and launching terrorist attacks. But that is clearly
not the case.
Simply put, most hungry people are not violent nor are they terrorists. They
might be desperate, embittered or dissatisfied, but that is a far cry from
joining the ranks of terrorists...
Numerous academic studies over the years clearly demonstrate this to be the
case. As MIT Prof. Alberto Abadie concluded in a groundbreaking 2006 study
titled “Poverty, Political Freedom and the Roots of Terrorism,” published in
American Economic Review, there is “no significant association between
terrorism and economic variables, such as income, once the effect of other
country characteristics is taken into account.”
The same holds true vis-à-vis Palestinian terrorism. Studies have repeatedly
found that those who engage in it are generally better off economically than
most Palestinians…
The resulting evidence on the individual level
suggests that both higher standards of living and higher levels of education
are positively associated” with the likelihood of a Palestinian joining Hamas
or Islamic Jihad, Hebrew University's Professor Berrebi wrote in 2003...
Indeed, Berrebi discovered that Palestinian suicide bombers “tend to be of
higher economic status and higher educational attainment than their
counterparts in the population.
My child's murderer, Ahlam Tamimi, reinforces
the above findings. Neither poor nor uneducated, she was a middle-class student of
journalism working as a TV
news anchor who thirsted for Jewish blood.
Released in
the tragically lopsided Shalit Deal in 2011 along
with several hundred other convicted murderers, she maintains her previous
comfortable standard of living today in her city of refuge, Amman.
She continues to boast of her "successful
operation" in which fifteen Jews perished and urges others to emulate
her.
It
may be ignorance that lies behind Dr Shai’s recent
responses - or rather, non-responses - to me. As we parted after that
visit to the Jerusalem
institution, he handed me his card inviting me
to contact him if I ever needed his help.
My husband and I have been eager
to take him up on that offer. Our quest for justice for our daughter is blocked by many,
including Israeli politicians. The U.S. Department of Justice indicted
Tamimi in
2017 and has asked Jordan to extradite her to Washington where she faces
terrorism charges. But King Abdullah's
regime has
rejected those requests and she remains free, sheltered by the Hashemite
kingdom.
The State Department has throughout all our years of effort been uncooperative.
So have U.S. politicians on both
sides of the aisle. We have learned that the Israeli government has signaled American
Jewish leaders know
they would prefer our requests for their
support
to be ignored.
We
approached Dr Shai
in the naïve hope
that he would speak up in support of our quest for justice. But he has never
responded to my emails and his spokesperson has repeatedly advised me to
direct my pleas elsewhere.
Here’s how
she framed the brush-off:
While I understand that this response
is not satisfactory for you, I will keep you posted if something more concrete
develops. I am deeply sorry that I cannot help you further at this moment in
time… I will continue
to explore how we can be of support - particularly through other diplomatic
means."
It’s been
months and the exploring is presumably still underway.
Perhaps I
should not have been surprised. Public figures who don’t respond when the
massive problems of institutionalization of the disabled are under discussion are
probably not that tuned in to justice either.
