Institutions grab headlines again

Beit Bar Dror in the Israeli news (December 9, 2022)

Naama Lerner, our local unsung hero ("A woman of valor" December 11, 2022) followed up her one-person protest with the update below. 

It's so shocking it sounds scripted. But trust me, Naama doesn't do that. (The translation from the Hebrew source on Facebook is mine.)

On Friday morning a news report was published about food poisoning at the Bar Dror institution in Kfar Saba. Thirty-six out of the one hundred residents came down with diarrhea, and some of them even had high fevers.

Does this news sound painfully familiar to you? If so, it's because a few months ago a very similar article was published about the Beit Dafna Institute. There it ended with the death of three residents. This time, miraculously, no one paid with his life.

But is this incident any less serious because of that?

A side anecdote. As you remember, last week private institutions held a demonstration in front of the Ministry of Welfare, demanding additional money and standards. Facing them the Movement for Independence placed signs intended to remind the institution managers of the incidents of neglect, abuse and death that occurred in the last year in these institutions, and of their audacity in demanding money and services.

At some point, some of the protesters began to cross the road and attempt to have a dialogue about what was written on the signs. One of the protesters introduced herself as an employee of the Bar Dror Mossad. She was angry that the signs lumped together all the institutions, and claimed that Bar Dror should not be included with the institutions where residents died due to neglect or abuse, since no untoward events had occurred there and it is exemplary..

"Our facility is different," she claimed. "It operates in an exemplary manner".

Less than a week has passed, and the news about food poisoning at the Bar Dror institution has been published. Need another explanation about the inclusion of all institutions under the same umbrella? Who is next in line?"

And now "hot off the press", an update on that update:

Sanitary deficiencies were discovered at the Bar Dror institution, a hostel for people with special needs, in Kfar Saba. The Ministry of Health today (Wednesday) issued an instruction to close the kitchen at the institution after tests of food samples revealed low levels of Clostridium bacteria and E.coli bacteria. Although these levels do not cause illness, they do indicate poor sanitary conduct of the institution." [Source: Walla (Hebrew)]

It doesn't seem like this institution will be excluded from the inclusive list of "bad entities" anytime soon.

And while we are agreeing on that generalization, note that Doron Almog's "babies" (ADI Negev and ADI Jerusalem) are two more such private, large, institutions enclosing people with disabilities from infancy to middle age. 

But that fact is carefully swept under the carpet. Instead, Almog, now head of the Jewish Agency is touted as a champion of the rights of people with disabilities. 

Here is but one example of many such distortions. Since he became chairman of the Jewish Agency, Almog has been promoting a policy of opening up the world of aliyah to all types of Jews in the Diaspora, including those will special needs. As the Jerusalem Post recently wrote: 

This topic is especially close to his heart, as the founder and chairman of the rehabilitation village "ADI Negev-Nachalat Eran" which has become a model for integrating people with disabilities. 

Which brings to mind Abraham Lincoln's words: “You can fool some of the people all the time; you can fool all the people some of the time; but, you can't fool all the people all the time.” 

Some of us are not fooled about Doron Almog.

A woman of valor

There are surely many unsung heroes among disabilities activists all over the world.

 
We are blessed with one in Israel, Adv Naama Lerner of Hatnuah L'atzmaut (The Movement for Independence): tireless, brave, determined, idealistic, compassionate, intelligent and religious - obviously a rare mix of traits. 

While she's often interviewed by journalists, and has been an activist for decades, she never toots her own horn. Which probably explains her relative anonymity.

Last week Naama exhibited unusual pluck which earned her a few kudos among activists. One person who acknowledged this was former Knesset member, Stav Shaffir. I've mentioned her here before because she organized the surprise visits paid by activists to closed institutions for people with disabilities in December 2018 in which I took part ["Making history: After the raid"].

She paired-up activists with Knesset members to enable us to gain entry to these normally locked institutions. (Note: the institutions are obligated to open their doors only to Knesset members.)

Naama Lerner protests outside Israel's

Ministry of Welfare, December 5, 2022 [Source]

Here - in my translation from the source Hebrew - is what Stav wrote about Naama on her Facebook page this past week:

I want you to meet a very brave woman: Naama Lerner. Yesterday she stood alone opposite the Ministry of Welfare in protest against the private companies that make millions at the expense of people with special needs. 

These companies receive a budget from the state in order to take care of them - but instead of paying a fair wage to the caregivers, they put the money in the management's pocket, and then come asking for more. 

The therapists get discouraged and are replaced, are usually untrained, and the treatment of a person with special needs - is accordingly. 

This year, residents in such institutions died due to food poisoning and in other unknown circumstances.
Naama stood there in front of the office alone, but she is really not alone: she stands on behalf of tens of thousands with special needs. On behalf of families who lost their children (physically or mentally) to institutions that did not treat them properly. 

I learned about her activities in depth when, as a Knesset member, I began conducting surprise visits to these institutions as a member of the Knesset - and I became a fan of her way, of her depth and endless devotion.
This year she founded the Movement for Independence which aims to promote people with special needs to independence in the community, instead of closed institutions. This is a movement in the right direction, operating with almost no resources against huge companies that make billions from the state and maintaining a strong lobby in the government. 

Let's cheer and strengthen her. She deserves it and we all deserve it.

It happened at the pool

That's us in the big pool

I am writing this post on International Day of Persons with Disabilities (IDPD). 

December 3 was first proclaimed as such in 1992 via United Nations General Assembly resolution 47/3. Its aim is to promote an understanding of disability issues and mobilize support for the dignity, rights and well-being of persons with disabilities.

Here in my own world, this past week provided a small reminder of the long journey that faces our society before it achieves those goals.

First, a bit of background.

The local, private, small and generously-heated pool we have enjoyed using weekly during these past two years has been officially shuttered. A child was injured on a broken pool tile, the parents threatened to sue the owners, and the latter's lawyer advised them to cease renting out the pool because of liability risks. Needless to say, they have heeded the advice.

Last week, we hadn't yet been notified of the permanent closure. So we were still hopeful that the small pool would reopen soon. We took Haya to the nearest public pool, a much larger facility where the water temperature is set at 29 degrees Celsius (84 in Fahrenheit terms) as compared with the 32 degree (90 F) of the private one. 

That may sound like a negligible difference. But trust me, it isn't. When I swim laps in that same water, it's fine. 

But as her hydro-therapist and standing mostly-still in the pool for Haya's session, I freeze.

As soon as we were notified about the small pool's demise I ordered a wetsuit online. Here's hoping it arrives in time for next week's session.

But I digress.

A few days ago, on arriving at the public pool, we were greeted with a shock. I mentioned to the guard at the entrance that since my daughter is wheelchair-bound I will swipe my chip (a digital entry ticket with stored value - not uncommon here) for her upstairs and then wheel her in via the street-level entrance. 

"Your daughter is in a wheelchair?" the guard asked. When I concurred, she told me that Haya couldn't enter and that I must go speak to the secretary.

 
The secretary explained that the office had "received complaints" about Haya's presence in the pool because she is so severely disabled.

"You need to bring her to a therapy pool, not here".

While my blood reached boiling point and I was contemplating a response, she made a phone call. After hanging up, she did a complete 180.

"It's fine. There's no problem. You can bring your daughter in."

What had really happened is anyone's guess. But regarding the "complainants", the mystery was soon solved.

As the three of us - Haya's carer, my husband and I - brought Haya in to the pool area, a woman in the water addressed the lifeguard with the sort of anti-disabled venom I'd presumed had exited long ago.

"You can't allow her in!" the woman told him, carefully ignoring us. "She doesn't have authorization to use the pool! It's your responsibility to keep her out!"

When the kind lifeguard defended Haya, the woman and her buddy left the pool in a fury.

The need for an International Day of Person's with Disabilities is clearly an ongoing one so long as people with disabilities remain unwelcome and unwanted by vocal segments of society.

On my murdered daughter's birthday, a request

Last week's terror bombings that took the life of Jerusalem teen Aryeh Schupak, and, a few days later, of Tadese Tashume Ben-Ma’ada, 50, father of six, who succumbed to his wounds on November 26, 2022, jolted the nation. 

They also stirred up the horror right beneath the surface of my soul. Horror that has lingered there since 2001, when my daughter Malki was murdered in the Jerusalem Sbarro pizzeria bombing on a hot, summer's afternoon. 

Like the twin bus-stop bombings of last week, the 10 kg bomb that destroyed Sbarro was also packed with nails to maximize the casualties it would inflict. And the Sbarro bomb's target was also a site that children, specifically, would be frequenting at that hour.

A Jerusalem bus stop, one of the two attacked on

November 23, 2022 [Image Source]

Now another innocent Jewish teen - kind, generous, earnest, industrious full of dreams and plans like our child - did not return to his parents.

When I say my heart goes out to his family, those are not just formulaic words. I really do know what they are enduring.

Malki would have celebrated her 37th birthday today, November 27, 2022, if not for that evil act of Hamas operative, Ahlam Tamimi. 

But unlike the terrorists who murdered Aryeh and Ben-Ma'ada, Ahlam Tamimi's whereabouts are known to all. She lives free and protected by Jordan's King Abdullah II. She was indicted by the United States Department of Justice in 2013. Her extradition from Jordan was subsequently demanded under a 1995 treaty signed and ratified by both countries. The U.S. has explicitly deemed that treaty valid despite Jordan's years-late insistence to the contrary.

But there the U.S.'s pursuit of justice for our Malki - a U.S. citizen - has come to a screeching halt.

The very same administration that declared on November 23, 2022, that "We condemn unequivocally the acts of terror overnight in Jerusalem. The United States has offered all appropriate assistance to the Government of Israel as it investigates the attack and works to bring the perpetrators to justice" is doing nothing, I repeat nothing, to bring the fugitive Sbarro perpetrator, Ahlam Tamimi, to justice. 

She has boasted of murdering fifteen men, women and children in the bombing she orchestrated at Sbarro but remains free as a lark.

My husband and I have been struggling since early-2012 to garner attention for our fight. The persistent silence and indifference that have met our pleas is not something we could have anticipated. It crosses all religious, political and geographic lines and is utterly confounding.

But without a doubt, the most disconcerting has been the silence and indifference of American Jewish activists, leaders, politicians and organization heads who claim to be concerned with causes precisely like ours: justice for Jewish victims. 

Many have close personal relationships with Jordan's ruler, Abdullah, often to the absurd point of adulation. His country's blatant anti-Semitism doesn't faze them.

Their hypocrisy has been a bitter pill for us to swallow.

If you too are incensed by this outrage, and are in a position to promote our cause, we are currently preparing a campaign where your help can be instrumental. Please contact us by email at thisongoingwar@gmail.com

Even if you feel you cannot take part, please do consider signing our petition addressed to the U.S. Secretary of State (you do not need to be an American to sign it): change.org/ExtraditeTamimi

Support group musings

Some thoughts below about a recent post on the Facebook page of the FamilieSCN2A Foundation - an online support group for parents of children with that genetic mutation. It's the one my daughter Haya has. 

Members of the group come from all over: Argentina, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Chile, China, Colombia, Czechia, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Iceland, India, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Luxembourg, Malaysia, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Scotland, Serbia, Spain, Sweden, Turkey, UK, USA, United Arab Emirates, Venezuela. And probably more.

It was written by Carla Forbes, one of the group's administrators, and is about the FamilieSCN2A logo and the colors that feature so prominently.

This is what the SCN2A support group is all about and this is why the following recent post there grabbed my attention. 

First, to clarify: I only peruse the page occasionally. The posts aren't usually relevant to me as most of the children are both younger and higher functioning than Haya. Hence many of the posts just depress me. 

But all convey the sense that these parents are utterly devoted to their children and determined to provide them with every available therapy and treatment to improve the quality of their lives.

Then this week, while I was up in the wee hours caring for Haya, I read the post I mentioned. It was exceptional, jarring and disappointing - to me at least:

Well... we found a host family in Houston (a hour and 45 mins from us) that is interested in having Alyssa live with them full time. We meet them Saturday.  This is the hardest and loneliest decision we have ever made. No one gets it and not many have gone down this road..... its a hard road y'all. Praying this is the right fit but if not, we will keep looking.

Several readers offered supportive comments and another few "liked" it. I thought a loud "ouch" to myself.  

But then I noted that neither of the site's administrators responded, as they usually do. Their silence seemed telling. This page was obviously not the right venue for news of this sort. 

Here below is my daughter Haya at her latest Monday Hydro with Mom session. 

Next week the pool will be closed for repairs. So we will be relegated to the large, cold public pool nearby. 

Why have I not bought myself a wetsuit like Haya's yet?! 

Sara Netanyahu is no friend of mine

[A version (with certain changes) of my opinion piece below was published as a blog post on the Times Of Israel site on October 27, 2022 under the title "Sara Netanyahu and the strings she pulls".]

Freed in Israel a day earlier, my child's admitted killer arrives

to a hero's raucous reception in Jordan, October 18, 2011

Raviv Drucker is an Israeli investigative reporter who has been sparring with former prime minister of Israel Binyamin Netanyahu since 2016. That's when, as host of Hamakor ("The Source"), a TV current affairs program that ran on what was then known as Israel's Channel 10, he revealed (see a 2016 post on Drucker's blog) that Netanyahu, then serving as prime minister, was promoting the idea of Israel buying three German-made submarines for about $1.5 billion at the same time as his personal attorney David Shimron was the lawyer for the man representing the German company in Israel.

Last week, a new 3-installment expose aired on Israel's Channel 13 (which is where the now-defunct Channel 10 ended up after a merger) that has probably left thousands of viewers shocked and incensed. (Part 1, in Hebrew without subtitles, can be viewed online here.)

But I expect few will have felt the personal affront that my husband and I did from Sara Netanyahu who has a hefty presence in the program. The disdainful references she made, via recorded conversations, were to us despicable.

Now, after listening to her, the prospect of the Netanyahus returning to the Prime Minister's residence after November 1's elections, as most pundits are predicting, seems more ominous to me than before. 

And yes, her husband's re-election, if that's what happens, would clearly mean Sara's return to power via the invisible strings she so relishes pulling.

What exactly did she say, you may wonder, about my husband and me?

Well, we are two of the terror victims she referred to dismissively in the context of the 2011 Shalit Deal over which her husband presided as prime minister at the time. [See "Shalit Prisoner Swap Marks 'Colossal Failure' for Mother of Israeli Bombing Victim", Haaretz, October 19, 2011] 

The Hamakor recordings expose the active role she had in it.

Since 2011, our Malki's murderer, Jordanian reporter Ahlam Tamimi ["27-Feb-22: The Jordanian woman who bombed Sbarro has earned another title"], has enjoyed freedom and fame, in part, because of the Netanyahu couple's determination to release her along with another 1,026 terrorists. 

More than a decade ago, Barak Ravid who was then a political commentator at Haaretz, wrote ["New Info on Shalit Deal Shows, Yet Again, That in the Mideast, Nothing Is as It Appears", Haaretz, July 24, 2012] that 

"at the time that Netanyahu made the decision to go ahead with the prisoner exchange, he regularly denied that his considerations were based on anything but security and diplomacy. Anyone who asserted otherwise was met with a furious response, at best, and a threatened libel suit, at worst. Only recently, several long months late, he agreed to admit – in an interview with the German newspaper BILD – that his wife Sara put pressure on him to approve the deal."

Yes, pressured by Sara. 

Interviewed for BILD, a German daily tabloid and Europe's best-selling newspaper, in June 2012, nine months after Malki's killer was let loose, Netanyahu said this:

 ...about his wife: “My wife gives me tremendous support and warmth. She is the cornerstone of our family, she raises our children, she always tells me you have to make time for the children.” When all of Israel was following the fate of abducted IDF soldier Gilad Shalit, 25, it was Sara, says ‘Bibi’, who finally convinced him to free Shalit from his captors. “She was the one who told me, think of that boy Gilad Shalit”, says Benjamin Netanyahu. “Think of that boy in that dark dungeon, having no hope, no light. Think of him as if he were our son. Think of him, his mother, his father, and then make the decision.”

The Netanyahus - and some of the freed terrorists

I now understand why my articles and personal letters to the Prime Minister's Office pleading for Tamimi to be deleted from the list of prospective releasees was ignored. We never stood a chance of eliciting a response. [See "22-Jul-22: The loneliest battle of my life"] 

Hundreds of those 1,027 imprisoned Arab terrorists were, like Tamimi, convicted murderers. Yet Netanyahu willingly handed them to the extorting terror group, Hamas, in return for one hostage, Gilad Shalit. 

None of them had taken as many lives as Ahlam Tamimi, our child's murderer: 15 men, women and children. And none had been sentenced to anything near the 16 consecutive life sentences she was given. 

Many of those releasees returned to active terrorist duty. Some subsequently murdered innocent Israeli civilians. A significant part of the current Palestinian Arab terrorist leadership - both in Gaza and in Istanbul - would still be behind Israeli bars today were it not for them winning freedom in the Shalit Deal.

Ahlam Tamimi herself has actively incited to terror from her TV programs and social media platforms. [See "23-Feb-22: Weaponizing Turkish teenage girls: What the Sbarro bomber did next"]

But what precisely was Sara's contribution to this lopsided, ill-conceived and lethal exchange?

Nir Hefetz, for years a spokesperson for Benjamin Netanyahu and currently a state witness in the former prime minister’s ongoing corruption trial, has the central role in the three-part Channel 13 expose I mentioned above. 

Recorded conversations he had with Sarah Netanyahu shed more light on her interference in Israel's decision to do the Shalit Deal. They're especially important because - in my opinion - unlike Hefetz's own oral testimony to the court and what he says in his interviews with Raviv Drucker, the veracity of Sara's recordings is indisputable. 

The only retort her camp was able to offer right after they aired was that Drucker had paid Hefetz "hundreds of thousands of shekels" for them. (Mentioned here.)

To which I say: money well spent! The Israeli public is entitled to hear their contents and the dirty truths that have been swept under the carpet until now.

* * *

You can get a sense of what I mean from the following Hebrew-language exchanges between Sara Netanyahu and Nir Hefetz. The translation is mine and thus unofficial of course:

Nir Hefetz: We just sat, about an hour ago, with the families of the Organization of Terror Victims

Sara Netanyahu:  Yes.

Nir Hefetz: Then one of them said something about you; that you assessed something very correctly. Gave you, so to speak, a compliment.

Sara Netanyahu:  Yes.

Sara and Bibi: From a 2012 Vanity Fair profile

Nir Hefetz: Then your husband told them: "Listen, this may surprise you, but it doesn't surprise me at all. She is s-o-o-o smart. [We hear Sara chuckling in the background.] That's how he said it to them, in that same tone as I did to you now. Like that, narrowed his eyes, like this, he says to them: "She's so smart. She's so smart." It was simply... you know, they saw that he said it from the heart."

Sara Netanyahu:  By the way, who do you think asked him to have this meeting?

Nir Hefetz: Ah, really?

Sara Netanyahu:  Nu, who else? [In Hebrew ?אלא מה meaning "naturally!"].

Nir Hefetz: And you know, he is so glad that he did it because now there's a positive report in Ynet.

Sara Netanyahu:  I told him: "You must listen to them [the bereaved families]. It can't be that only after the decision you'll sit with them.

Nir Hefetz: He sat with them for an hour and a half.

Sara Netanyahu:  Nice, nice. And hour and a half is "fair enough" ["פייר אנאפ"]. It's nice.

* * *

She evidently felt she had given us a big enough lollipop to win our docility and compliance. 

But, for the record, these two terror victims, parents of a murdered child, will not be silenced that easily. Our fight to have Malki's murderer extradited by her current protector, Jordan's King Abdullah II, will continue until she is tried under US law in Washington DC. 

And, thereafter, once again behind bars - the only place she belongs.

A shofar message for Doron Almog

Image Source

On August 16, 2022, Doron Almog took the helm of the Jewish Agency.  

Since his nomination for that position, on June 16, 2022, Almog has been hailed as an Israeli hero. Here is the Times of Israel summarizing his claim to that status:   

Almog, 71, a past head of the Israel Defense Forces’ Southern Command, dedicated his life after leaving the military to running a widely lauded rehabilitation village in the Negev desert for people with physical and mental disabilities. ADI Negev-Nahalat Eran is named for his son Eran, who had severe autism and physical disabilities before his death in 2007... [Times of Israel, August 21, 2022]

Since then, hardly a week goes by without a news item about Almog and the Jewish Agency. They have all been unadulterated hagiographies. And occasionally when no such report appeared, he - or his staff - seem to have produced their own. 

So it's fair to predict that some will be enflamed by what I have to say about him.

Almog oversees two large, closed institutions (one of which he founded) named ADI, for people with disabilities ranging from infancy to young adulthood. Its motto: "It’s all in the name: ADI celebrates ability at every level, promotes diversity and insists on inclusion."

He does so despite growing global opposition to institutionalization of this population. 

And he does so despite the recent passage of a new Israeli law that, once implemented, promises to begin the mass transfer of people with disabilities out of the sort of warehouses that Almog champions.

One would have hoped that Yom Kippur and the self examination it encourages would stir Almog to reconsider this major "life achievement" of his. It doesn't seem so when you read his latest op ed, replete with content like this:

"After honoring my late brother Eran who was killed in battle during the Yom Kippur War and my late son, Eran, who was born with severe disabilities, my life philosophy has always been to never leave anyone behind. This applies to my approach regarding aliyah as well. That is because how we treat the vulnerable among us reflects our morality as a society... The absorption of olim should be a national responsibility... We must continue to work, in accordance with the government of Israel, to reunite families and bring olim home, no matter where they are in the world. It is also our obligation to ensure that Ethiopian olim become the absolute best version of themselves. It is what they deserve and what Israeli society needs." ["A full-circle journey: Bringing Ethiopian Jewry home", Times of Israel Blogs, September 28, 2022]

I would remind Almog that much of what he promises to deliver to our new olim has never been provided to our "most vulnerable" as he refers to our population with disabilities.

"Absorption", "reuniting families", is also a national obligation toward those with disabilities who are taken from their families and locked up in large, isolated, closed institutions because the government refuses to provide for their needs at home.  

I am not alone in this assessment. 

Recently an employee at ADI Negev visited (infiltrated?) one of the Whatsapp groups in which I am active. It's designated for people with disabilities, their families and activists in the field.  She said she was soliciting employment as an aide for people with disabilities. But she added her view of ADI Negev: 

"I am referring to ADI Negev, the Rehabilitation Village, a wonderful place for any age with one on one projects and programs." [My translation of the Hebrew source]

And after she received negative responses re ADI, she wrote:

"First of all I didn't request opinions about ADI Negev. The place is not a fortress. It is actually a village, suitable and pleasant for residents happy with many programs and choice and they create gift (sic) and go out and more. I am only asking that if any of you are seeking a worker, for independence with individuals, approach me." [Again, my translation from Hebrew]

Naama Lermer, a disabilities-rights attorney and founder of Hatnu'ah L'atzma'ut ("The Movement for Independence") and formerly of Bizchut, then posted to the same Whatsapp group in response [again my translation of the Hebrew source]:

I know ADI Negev well. I visited there more than once . It's an institution in every sense of the word. Many groups of residents with disabilities. With a uniform daily schedule. Without any real connection to the community. Some of them are cut off from their families because their families live very far away. People who won't experience what it's like to lick an ice cream in an ice cream shop in the mall. To buy clothes in a clothing store. To get on a train and see the view. Adults who spend most of the day sitting with construction games or children's toys. And it's sad. I wouldn't want to live like that. I wouldn't want my children to live like that. So I don't wish that on anyone else. I want more than creative works and children's games for them. I want more than a clean, tidy place. I want a real life for them. Even if their disabilities are very present."

Many of us have just heard the shofar blown at the close of Yom Kippur prayers. In his New York Times op ed this week, the former chief Rabbi of Moscow, Pinchas Goldschmidt, wrote:

And this is perhaps what the shofar, the ram’s horn that Jews blow on the High Holy Days, represents. According to the Bible, the shofar blow is the sound of freedom. It was historically blown at the beginning of the jubilee year — the year that freed all slaves and returned all sold ancestral property. The sound of the shofar blow is meant to remind us of both freedom and equality.

Let's hope that message will reach those, like Almog, who persist in their perversion of "freedom and equality" to include the warehousing of citizens with disabilities in institutions.