Shas restarts Ethiopian immigration - mistake?

Haaretz

Quietly, without fanfare or any sort of serious debate, the government is resuming Falashmura immigration from Ethiopia, a year after it was ended by the previous administration.

Interior Minister Eli Yishai, the man who holds the keys to the gates of Israeli citizenship, is sending officials to Ethiopia to restart the process of examining the eligibility of potential immigrants. They will be looking at Falashmura claiming to be descendants of Jews who for some reason or other converted to Christianity generations ago.

In the first stage, they will review the cases of 3,000 Falashmura who were apparently left out of the process, but ultimately Yishai wants to enable all the inhabitants of the Falashmura compound in Gondar, which has an official population of 8,700, to apply for citizenship.

Thus, in typical Israeli fashion, a whole government policy been overturned without a cabinet meeting to discuss the various ramifications, nor has there been any inter-departmental discussion to plan all the contingencies. So what if the entire immigration and absorption setup - operated jointly by the interior and absorption ministries, the embassy in Addis Ababa and the Jewish Agency - has been dismantled and nobody knows where the funding for rebuilding it is going to come from, for how long it is expected to operate again and for how many immigrants? Screw long-term planning.

The pressure groups pressed, the rabbis ruled and the minister gave the order. The word is out in Ethiopia, the disappointed multitudes who left the Gondar compound are returning, and more family members will be joining them. The Israelis are opening the gates again.

It is hardly surprising. The Operation Solomon airlift in May, 1991 was to have finished the saga of Ethiopian Jewry once and for all, but despite four government committees and countless policy decisions since, all it took was one ministerial dictate to change the situation.

The cabinet decided in 2005 to set a firm date after which the Falashmura immigration would end and to limit the total numbers of migrants who would be allowed in. So what? The influential Falashmura lobby predicted that all it was needed was change of government to re-open the process and they were right. An absurd coalition has grown up around the Falashmura cause. Liberal American Jews who want Israel to do their tikun olam (healing the world) by accepting black citizens with a vague connection to the Jewish people join religious right-wingers who see the Ethiopians as the ultimate antidote to the Palestinian demographic problem. And Shas rabbis clinging to Rabbi Ovadia Yosef's original ruling, 35 years ago, in which he recognized the Falashmura as Jews, have also banded with them.

Former interior minister Meir Sheetrit opposed them, with the backing of Ehud Olmert and Tzipi Livni, but no one is going to stop his successor now. Benjamin Netanyahu is certainly not going to endanger his increasingly shaky coalition by fighting Shas on this issue; many of those around him have long been fans of the Falashmura cause.

Neither is he going to open up another front with American Jewish leaders. He needs their support now more than ever as the strategic relationship with Washington plumbs new depths. Can you imagine what it would look like if Israel denied the rights of "black Jews" while the son of a Kenyan sits in the Oval Office?

Of course no one has taken the trouble to consult with the impressive group of professionals, and Jewish Agency and Foreign Ministry veterans who worked in Ethiopia for years and have a clear position on the issue. They would have told them that there is no finite number of Falashmura who can claim a tenuous link to Jewish roots. The family structure and marriage norms of Ethiopian society are of a fluidity incomprehensible in the West and every new immigrant who is allowed in opens up the opportunity for former spouses and stepchildren who will demand family reunification.[...]

R' Avraham Goldstein - discusses geirus

Yiddeleclips - Shaul Gromer

Rav Sternbuch - freedom of speech

55

Obama stokes racism by comments

Fox News

The white police sergeant accused of racial profiling after he arrested renowned black scholar Henry Louis Gates Jr. in his home was hand-picked by a black police commissioner to teach recruits about avoiding racial profiling.

Gates accused the 11-year department veteran Sgt. James Crowley of being an unyielding, race-baiting authoritarian after Crowley arrested and charged him with disorderly conduct last week.

Crowley confronted Gates in his home after a woman passing by summoned police for a possible burglary. The sergeant said he arrested Gates after the scholar repeatedly accused him of racism and made derogatory remarks about his mother, allegations the professor challenges

Gates has labeled Crowley a "rogue cop," demanded an apology and said he may sue the police department.

Cambridge Police Commissioner Robert Haas, in his first public comments on the arrest, said Thursday that Crowley was a decorated officer who followed procedure. The department is putting together an independent panel to review the arrest, but Haas said he did not think the whole story had been told.

"Sgt. Crowley is a stellar member of this department. I rely on his judgment every day. ... I don't consider him a rogue cop in any way," Haas said. "I think he basically did the best in the situation that was presented to him."

Haas said Crowley's actions were in no way motivated by racism.

On Wednesday, President Obama elevated the dispute, when he said Cambridge Police "acted stupidly" during the encounter. [...]

NYTimes

The police sergeant whom President Obama accused of acting "stupidly" in arresting a prominent black Harvard professor offered his own account of the incident on Thursday, adding a new dimension to a drama that has transfixed the nation.

The arrest of the professor, Henry Louis Gates Jr., was dominating talk shows and dinner conversations even before Mr. Obama discussed it on Wednesday at his news conference. But the president's comments seemed to further polarize the national debate over whether the sergeant, James Crowley, who is white, was right to arrest Professor Gates for disorderly conduct while investigating a possible break-in at the professor's home in Cambridge, Mass.[...]

Chillul HaShem - Money laundering & corruption

NYTimes

Illegal sales of body parts. Furtive negotiations in diners, parking lots, and boiler rooms. Nervous jokes about “patting down” a man who turned out to indeed be an informant. And, again and again, piles of cash being passed along — once in a box of Apple Jacks cereal stuffed with $97,000

In this world of underhanded dealing and illicit promises, corrupt payments were “invitations” and approvals for development projects were “opportunities.”

Those were just some details of a sprawling corruption scandal, stretching from New Jersey to Brooklyn and beyond, that were revealed in court papers Thursday. Forty-four people were arrested, including three New Jersey mayors, two state assemblymen and five rabbis, the authorities said.[...]

Yeshiva World News editorial
Over the past 2 years, many small non-profits in Israel – ranging from yeshivot to medical organizations – have fallen under scrutiny from the IRS. For the past 2 years, Israeli non-profits couldn't understand the scrutiny. Today it became clear: No Jewish non-profit could be trusted to be legitimate. [...]

Psychiatrist concludes mother is fit to stand trial

Haaretz

A court-commissioned psychiatric evaluation of the ultra-Orthodox mother suspected of starving her son did not support claims that she was unfit to stand trial, the examining psychiatrist said.

Jerusalem's District Psychiatrist said he did not accept the results of Dr. Yaakov Meir Weil's examination.

Weil performed the examination at the home of the woman's rabbi, where she is staying in house arrest. Weil, who came there at the request of rabbis from the woman's religious sect as per an agreement between the woman and a judge who arraigned her, also said he could not diagnose the woman "based on a two-hour" talk.


The mother, a Haredi woman from the Eda Haredit group in Jerusalem, was arrested after hospital officials at Hadassah University Hospital, Ein Karem, saw her remove a feeding tube from her severely underweight three-year-old child on a hidden camera. She claims that she was trying to feed her son solid foods.

One of the things that Weil had come to ascertain was the possibility that the woman is suffering from Munchausen syndrome - a psychiatric disorder wherein sufferers feign or create disease, illness, or psychological trauma in themselves or in loved ones in order to draw attention or sympathy.

But in a talk with Haaretz, Weil criticized police and doctors at Hadassah who speculated that the mother suffered from this condition. "I hope we can see each other in the future so I can help her. The environment she comes from is not used to requiring psychological services but maybe I can meet her in the future to reach a diagnosis based on the relationship I have with them," he said. "People in Hadassah diagnosed her without her ever meeting a psychiatrist. The talk about the Munchausen syndrome is gossip as far as I'm concerned."

Weil added that the syndrome was "not something that can be diagnosed through a two-hour talk or any sort of simple psychiatric interview."

"In our talk, I saw nothing to convince me she is unfit to stand trial, psychotic or has trouble telling right from wrong," he added.

Privacy and sensitity towards Chareidim?

JPost

Mental disease is not a crime. Society's role is not to banish mental patients, but to care for them while recognizing the patient's human rights and the need to safeguard the public. A society's attitude toward the mentally ill reflects its moral standards, values…
- Former supreme court chief justice Aharon Barak

By this criterion how should Israeli society, and the media in particular, evaluate its performance in the case of the mother suspected of starving her toddler son due to Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy (MSP)?

In this rare disorder, which is almost impossible to diagnose and cannot be treated, an adult caregiver deliberately causes harm to a vulnerable dependent - most often a child. The underlying cause is a morbid craving for attention.

MSP is either a personality or a psychiatric disorder - experts disagree - though it can have criminal consequences. Most professionals believe that a mother with MSP does have the capacity to control her urges. We cannot know what impelled this mother to allegedly inflict suffering on her child. Her psychiatric evaluation began only Monday night.

After the mother was arrested by police, the family obtained a court order barring publication of the story. Somehow a Hebrew tabloid got wind of the news, challenged the injunction and won. Perhaps the court acted precipitously in lifting the gag order, robbing authorities and community leaders of the opportunity to resolve their differences away from the limelight.

The tabloid then sought and obtained a comment from Hadassah hospital. Subsequent coverage by the press emphasized that the family involved was from an insular anti-Zionist haredi sect - Toldot Aharon. Coming on the heels of the so-called Taliban mother from Ramat Beit Shemesh and several other instances of child abuse among the ultra-Orthodox, the haredi angle to the Munchausen Syndrome story grabbed the headlines and wouldn't let go.

SO THERE are two issues here. One is whether the right to privacy of the suspect - who is also allegedly mentally ill - was violated; the other is whether the haredi angle was overplayed.

Should Israel's 1981 Privacy Protection Law and 1996 Patients' Rights Law have shielded the presumed MSP mother from having her condition exposed to public scrutiny? While her name hasn't been published, her identity is known within her own neighborhood. [...]

Supreme Court convicts yeshiva student in hit-and-run

JPost

The Supreme Court on Thursday convicted Yeshiva student Itamar Biton for running over Ethiopian-Israeli parking lot cashier Noga Zoarish, overruling last week's acquittal by Jerusalem District Court judge Moshe Drori.

In addition to the 150 hours of community service that were, nevertheless, ordered by Drori, the Supreme Court added a one-year suspended sentence.

In a 350-page ruling heavily criticized last week by Supreme Court Justice Edmund Levy, Drori had written that he made the decision because the defendant, the son of the Hadera chief rabbi, wanted to become a dayan (religious court judge).

Drori also wrote that as a result of being run over by the defendant, whose name had been banned from publication until Wednesday night, Zoraish, had become a full-fledged member of society, because she had been treated respectfully throughout the legal proceedings. He also ruled that since the young driver's apology had been accepted by the Ethiopian woman, there was no need to determine that the driver's offense constituted moral turpitude.

The Jerusalem District Court judge had also under pressure from Chief Sephardi Rabbi Shlomo Amar and Interior Minister Eli Yishai (Shas), with the latter saying that a conviction would ruin Biton's rabbinic future.

The controversial decision could well have ruined Drori's chances of getting himself appointed to the High Court of Justice. [...]

Charedi health minister criticized for not backing Hadassah Hospital

YNet

Deputy Health Minister Yakov Litzman visited the Hadassah Ein Kerem Hospital in Jerusalem on Thursday morning, following riots in Jerusalem over the arrest of a woman suspected of starving her toddler son. The child is still hospitalized.

At the start of the visit, the hospital's Director-General Shlomo Mor Yosef asked Litzman why he had avoided condemning the ultra-Orthodox community's attacks on the hospital.

"There is no reason to refer to the deputy director-general with these names – Mengele, a filthy traitor," Mor Yosef told Litzman. "The hospital is a place of grace, not of war… No one speaks and not one utters anything. Is this what the State of Israel has to say to its doctors?"

Litzman responded, "I give all the backing needed to Hadassah and its doctors." He added that pashkavilim (wall posters) has been published against him too and that he has been attacked by many.

Chareidi consensus? Jonathan Rosenblum

JPost

[...] But it is absolutely false to state that there is any kind of consensus that the mother is innocent or a categorical rejection of the claims of Hadassah. In yesterday's Mishpacha, by far the largest circulation haredi weekly, Rabbi Mordechai Gotfarb of the Toldot Aharon community is quoted, "Of course, if she were diagnosed with Munchausen, then we would understand that the child would have to be taken away."

Rabbi Moshe Sternbuch, head of the Eda Haredit rabbinical court, did not reject out of hand police claims in a statement issued last Friday: "If their allegations are true, this woman deserves the appropriate medical treatment, but not to sit in a prison cell with such subhuman treatment." He went on to categorically reject "any talk of boycotting the hospital" as "against Halacha and self-damaging" in light of the fact that "many in our community receive their services with great care."

That does not mean, of course, that every claim of the hospital and police is accepted at face value. Many haredim would still like to know what were the presenting symptoms when the boy in question was placed in Hadassah's children's oncology ward, and how his mother could have prevented him from eating under the noses of the hospital staff during the nearly seven months he has been hospitalized. But there is a willingness to wait until trial for the full presentation of the facts.

IF THERE is one thing, however, about which there is a nearly unanimous agreement across all sectors of the haredi community, it is condemnation of violent actions, such as throwing stones at police and burning garbage cans. From the beginning of the Shabbat demonstrations, after Mayor Nir Barkat's bombastic announcement of the opening of a municipal parking lot, as if he were the secular Saracen recapturing the city from the haredim, Sternbuch has issued countless public proclamations stating clearly, "Anyone who commits acts of violence declares that he doesn't belong to our community."[...]

Mother accused of abuse - mentally fit for trial

JPost

The psychiatrist who evaluated the Jerusalem haredi mother suspected of nearly starving her three-year-old son to death was expected to announce Thursday that she does not pose a threat to her two other children and is fit to stand trial.

According to various local media reports, Dr. Yaakov Weill, the psychiatrist appointed to evaluate her, was set to refute claims that the woman was suffering from Munchausen's-by-proxy.

The Jerusalem's Magistrate's Court will convene later Thursday to discuss the woman's house arrest conditions after the psychiatrist presents his findings.

The court placed the woman under house arrest last week on condition that she take the test, and her refusal to carry it out on Sunday put that agreement in jeopardy.

The woman eventually showed up for a series of psychiatric examinations which commenced on Tuesday night in the city's Arnona neighborhood. It came despite pressure from some members of the extremist Eda Haredit organization not to do so until she was allowed to meet with her children, or until her child was removed from Jerusalem's Hadassah-University Medical Center at Ein Kerem.

The mother, who is five months pregnant, is suspected of severely abusing her child for two years, until he weighed a mere 7 kilograms.

The hospital claims it has footage of the woman disconnecting her son's feeding tube.

Deputy Health Minister Ya'acov Litzman told Israel Radio on Thursday that if the woman is indeed deemed mentally stable, she shouldn't need to stand trial. Litzman said that a Health Ministry committee would examine the hospital's conduct in the case. [...]