Tuesday, October 11, 2005

 

Child Welfare

It's amazing at what an excellent administrator G-d is. I know that there are people who prefer to complain, but honestly, I think He does an amazing job.

Just today for example...

After kvetching, complaining about having to wait for a ride home, competing with the kids also trying to get home, and there's no public transportation between Beit El, where I teach and Shiloh, where I live.

So I waited, and there actually were only a few kids, not the mobs I had been dreading. I guess that's a lesson to me not to allow myself to get into one of those funks.

So after a short, ok not short, reasonable amount of time, who should show up, but a neighbor I had been hoping to talk to. He's very involved with the kids who have been jailed.

He gave me one of the stories you're not going to see in the mainstream press.

Did you know that there is still a young teenage girl in jail? She's one of those who kept insisting that she didn't recognize the judicial system, because it's not "Jewish." Others, like a neighbor of mine, who follow the same ideology, decided that regardless, she'd do whatever to go home.

It hasn't been doing anyone any good to stay in jail. The judicial, government and media have tried to portray it that the parents have brainwashed the kids into demonstrating and getting arrested, that they're just not good parents. So when there were still more kids in jail and a rabbi came to visit them, the authorities insisted that the rabbi's discussion with the kids had to be "witnessed" or supervised by someone from the Children's Welfare authority. This bothered the kids and made it difficult and uncomfortable for them to speak to the rabbi.

The rabbi may have had been able to convince all of the kids to sign whatever was necessary if he had been able to talk without that outsider.

Now there's still one young girl in jail, according to the report I got today. This girl refuses to recognize the Israeli court. And she refused to allow a court appointed lawyer represent her. The authorities have now decided to declare her mental ill and are sending her for psychiatric testing. And we all know that the psychiatrists medicate when they can't control a person.

Something must be done to save this girl. She's not a dangerous criminal. She's just an ideological purist. She's an idealist. She's a teenager!

There's no reason for her to be in prison. She has certainly served enough time for just being an idealistic Jewish kid.

cross-posted to Shiloh Musings

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