Israel versus Judaism

The methods have changed, but the goal is the same!

We tend to think that the scandals that took place in the early years of the Zionist state and before its founding — such as the Teheran Children, the sale of the Yemenite children, Yossele Shuchmacher and the like – are things of the past. Today it would impossible for such things to happen. The secularist fanaticism of the past has cooled down. They no longer feel the urgency of secularizing the entire Jewish people. The Zionists' strong hatred toward the religious community with their “exilic” appearance, which provided them with an unwelcome reminder of their own past, is not longer present. The generation of those who were brought up religious and cast it away, the Labor Zionists who hate religion, are gone. We live today in a multi-cultural world, built on the tenets of democracy, a world of tolerance and respect for other ways of life – even the religious Jewish way of life!

Another reason why the situation today should be different is that in the early years of the State, the religious community was small in numbers, weak and poor, and by contrast the Zionist political machine was well-organized and well-funded. Therefore they could get away with anything they wanted to do, without fear of repercussions. They could, for example, keep children in transfer camps, away from the world's eye, without fear that any religious Jew would come near them and leak out the facts. And if there was an occasional Yemenite who stood up against the spiritual destruction of his community, they could simply put a bullet in his head, silencing him and any others who considered following in his footsteps.

The technology of instant media via the Internet has also changed the rules of the game. The Internet has transformed a big world into a small world. In a few seconds, media can fly from one end of the world to the other, a fact that makes it hard to hide a crime even for a short time. This also contributed to our complacency. We thought that the things that happened in the early years of the State could never happen again.

The recent events surrounding the devoted mother and her son, which shocked and stirred the entire religious Jewish world, along with the readiness of the media to spread unfounded accusations against this devoted mother and the entire religious Jewish community, slap us on our face and show us that although the methods may have changed, the goal has not changed and the hatred is not gone.

These stormy event turn the clock back 60 years, right back to the Zionist absorption camps, with their social workers, doctors and hospitals to which the “sick” Yemenite children were taken, and from which they never returned to this day.

The poor children who were snatched away from their parents through trickery, and sold to childless Italian couples, or to some wealthy Canadian gentile whose only son wished for a brother… today have no idea that they come from the Jewish people, from the pure and pristine tribe of Yemen.

We have been living in false complacency. We thought that today it could not happen. But we were wrong! So wrong!

True, it is difficult today to hide things. True, it would be almost impossible today to put thousands of families behind barbed wire fences and do whatever you want with them, without the whole world finding out. But advanced security techniques do not stop thieves – they only force the thieves to use more advanced methods themselves. Here too: the methods used in the early days of the state to fight religion are not relevant today, but the fight itself has not subsided. It has only become more advanced.

Once they used barbed wire, with its sharp and threatening appearance. Now they pretend to be friendly and caring…

25 Questions That Have Yet to be Answered

  1. How is it possible that the child was hospitalized on and off for two years (continuously for the last seven months), during which time the doctors were searching for an elusive illness, and they didn't notice that it was the mother who was starving her child under their noses? Two years?

 

  1. Documents have been published showing clearly that the doctors instructed the family not to feed the child except through the feeding tube. If so, the argument that the mother withheld food from the child is incorrect. The court realizes this, and instead they claim that she disconnected the feeding tube. How is it possible that for seven months she was disconnecting the feeding tube every day for whole days (for less than that would not have any effect) and the hospital staff did not see what was happening under their noses?
  1. No matter whether the mother was right or wrong, we are dealing with a tremendous medical failure: a child who was healthy (by the Hadassah own admission) was improperly treated for two years. Why doesn't the court investigate this failure?

 

  1. Why, after the separation order was given to the mother, did the police insist on arresting her, even handcuffing her, right at the door of the welfare office?
  1. Why does the staff of Hadassah Hospital see itself as a plaintiff? Why are they constantly meeting with the media to strengthen their side of the case? Deputy Director General Birnbaum said, “The proofs are in the file are convincing.” What business is it of theirs? What was Birnbaum looking for in the halls of the court during the trial?

 

  1. On the basis of what professional opinion did the attorneys and the police decide that the mother suffered from Munchausen's syndrome?
  1. Why did the local psychiatrist decide, during the mother's imprisonment, that she had to remain in prison without being examined? How did he reject the diagnosis of Dr. Weil, when he had not examined or even exchanged one word with the woman?

 

  1. Why did the attorneys choose the services of Dr. Weil and then later, when his results did not fit their agenda, reject his diagnosis and launched a negative media campaign against him?
  1. After it became clear that the mother did not have Munchausen's, why did the police speaker, Moshe Nussbaum, spread the accusation that the mother abused her child in other ways, aside from withholding food, promising that “the accusation file against the mother who starved her child will shock the country”?

 

  1. Why do the attorneys have additional motivation to fight for the mother's remaining behind bars, separating her from her children, when it is clear to everyone that she is not dangerous?
  1. Why, to this day, have the videos documenting her withholding food from the child not been released? According to the hospital, such videos are usually released to the media in similar cases of abuse (such as in lawsuits against caretakers and assisters of the elderly).

 

  1. If the hospital has nothing to hide, why is it stopping at any price the appointing of an independent investigation committee, or even a hospital committee, to investigate the doctors' treatment of the child?
  1. Why did they release the mother, if she was indeed dangerous and likely to starve her children? Couldn't she harm her other children, as she did to this one?

 

  1. If the media's generalization is true, that many parents in the Haredi sector starve their children, why do all the prominent distributors of food in the country focus most of their efforts on this sector?
  1. Why did the whole scandal break only at the moment that the mother began to speak about transferring her child to another hospital?

 

  1. If the claims of Hadassah are correct, the mother starved her child, and everything is proven, then why did they allow the child to suffer all this time? Why didn't they arrest the mother the first time she did it? Isn't a patient in the hospital the responsibility of the hospital?
  1. Why did Prof. Shlomo Mor Yosef refuse to answer the questions of Channel 2 News, “Is the increase in the child's weight the result of overfeeding?'

 

  1. Is there any truth to the rumor that, after the mother's imprisonment, they fed the child cortisone in order to fatten him up?
  1. It is clear to any intelligent person that the child was starved, if not by the mother, then by the hospital in the course of some medical test. The question then is: if the mother was acquitted and allowed to return home, why don't they put someone else on trial in her place? Someone must be guilty in this story! If it becomes clear that the mother is normal and innocent, then someone at Hadassah must be held accountable for what happened.

 

  1. Yediot Aharonot published a shocking picture of the child. How could they publish a photo of a hospitalized three-year-old child, without giving the source of the photo?
  1. Logic, as well as the background of the photo, dictate that the photo was taken in the office of a doctor in the hospital where the child was hospitalized. It is illegal for a hospital to release to the public medical details about their patients. How was it legal for them to release a photo of the patient himself?

 

  1. Why doesn't the police investigate this photo and prosecute those who illegally released it?
  1. Why isn't the media invited to investigate the crime committed by the hospital in giving out a photo of a patient to a newspaper, with the goal of using him for a public campaign against his mother?

 

  1. Why doesn't the public understand that publishing the picture, along with the hateful article written by Hanoch Daum, have no connection with factual reporting, but is actually a cheap and transparent libel?
  1. Reuters.net published photos of the child taken a few months before this illegal photo in Yediot. In these photos, the child is smiling, walking and alert. The photo in Yediot was taken a few months later, after treatment in the hospital.

 

The child's family claims that the child was starved in the hospital. They stopped feeding him for reasons kept secret by the hospital, and that is why his health deteriorated.

Anyone who sees the photos of the child with his family and later in the hospital will agree that the family's claims are true, and that the state of the child as he appears in the post-treatment photo is the result of the treatment in the hospital.

The same media that pounced on the photo illegally given to them by the hospital, did not print the photos released by the child's family – why?

Right after the mother was arrested, the hospital rushed to remove the feeding tube and feed the child normally, and the hospital itself publicized the increase in the child's weight.

It is clear that the mother could not have starved the child while he was hospitalized. Comparison of the photos taken of the child at home with that taken in the hospital show beyond a doubt that the photo released by the hospital reflects the child's deteriorated condition after being starved by the hospital, in the course of the unbelievable “treatment” he underwent there. This is why the mother began to complain, whereupon the hospital, the social workers, the police, the attorneys and the media conspired in a campaign that landed the poor mother in jail.

The clear and only logical conclusion one can reach from all of the above is as follows: the hospital erred in the treatment they gave this child. It may have been a false diagnosis of cancer and the administering of chemotherapy (the child was in the oncology unit, and the hospital photo shows baldness by comparison to the home photos) as the family claims, or even if not, they starved him for no reason in the hospital, as can be seen clearly from comparison of the photos.

The media deliberately withheld from the public testimony that it received, as is evident from the fact that they did not publish the photos of the child with his family together with the photo released by the hospital. This is because the media had joined a campaign of false incitement, with the intention of using this poor mother to blacken the face of the entire religious community.

Media managers usually decides what to publish and what not to publish based on what they think will give them the highest ratings and thus the most money. But in this case, they buried these valuable photos, which would certainly have brought up their ratings. This shows that their hatred towards the Torah and the people who represent it is more powerful than their desire for money. The police and the attorneys are also partners in the media's and the hospital's crimes.

This case is very similar to the recent case of the outstanding young man, Yisrael Wallace. Then we saw the same method and the same goal: the secularist establishment put all their power to work in order to blacken that which is most precious of all to the Haredi community: the Jewish family and the Jewish home as the building block of society. They wish to cover up for the disintegration of the family unit in the secular world, which has led directly to the moral decay in their world. The purpose of the media campaign is to say, “The Haredim are no better than us!”

The battle we wage against the hiding of the truth in this episode is a battle for the honor of mankind. It is a struggle to guard the Jewish character of the Jewish community, which is under siege by the secular heretical establishment.

We demand an independent investigation committee without delay, whose members will be agreed upon by both parties to the dispute, to investigate the story of this child from all sides. All relevant medical documents must be opened. The conduct of the hospital must be evaluated. All details of the treatment given to the child must be examined. How the child reached the state of starvation while hospitalized must be determined.

We demand that such a committee also investigate the conduct of the police and the government attorneys, and the amount of joint effort that went on between these branches of government. Was this a deliberate persecution of an innocent mother? Who is accountable for the abuse of the mother while in prison? She entered as a Jewish woman and mother, kind, strong, energetic and full of courage, and left broken and destroyed. We wish her a quick recovery from the suffering they caused her there.

The religious community must demand the establishment of this committee, and they must continue the battle until the truth comes out. If not, they will swallow us alive.

It should be noted that even some secular writers, whose brains have not been completely washed, understand the game being played here. A newspaper writer named Yael Mishali writes, “A mother starving her child is the hottest excuse to engage in birth control. The motivation for abusing her is the wind of secular feminist anti-mother terror that blows in our sector.”

Chaim Brem, another well-known secular journalist, writes the following lines: “In the course of the demonstrations and upheavals of the past few weeks, Jerusalem went into a terrifying anti-Haredi hysteria, and in the reaction of the enlightened public one could detect unmistakable signs of simple anti-Semitism… Anti-Haredi prejudice was prominent in this episode of the mother starving her child, and the self-righteous and collective smears that she provoked.

“As in every political debate that brings strong-armed tactics with it, the pundits generalize and don't even try to understand the definitions that they themselves set down. Haredim, for example, are always defined as 'extremists.' This sweeping generalization is used to justify brutal police tactics and media hatred directed at the entire community.”