Last update - 00:00 06/11/2006
Treasury opposes bill to aid needy Holocaust survivors
By Amiram Barkat, Haaretz Correspondent
The treasury has voiced opposition to a bill that would grant social benefits to Holocaust survivors in dire economic straits, saying it is willing to fund only a small fraction of the aid the new law would grant survivors for medication and housing.
The benefits would cost NIS 65 million a year, and would cover 75% of the recipient's monthly prescription drug costs, as well as providing assistance in procuring public housing. It would also exempt the recipient from paying the annual television tax.
So far, the treasury has stated it is willing to contribute only NIS 7 million to the proposed benefits package.
The new law is set to be approved by the Knesset Immigration and Absorption Committee later this month, before it returns to the Knesset floor for final ratification.
The bill's approval is still in doubt because of the treasury's opposition to the benefits to be parceled out to Holocaust survivors.
According to the wording of the law, "eligible Holocaust survivors" able to receive the new benefits are those who were interned in concentration camps or spent some part of the war in ghettos, or in hiding, whose economic situation is dire.
The treasury's opposition to the law has sparked outrage amongst survivors in Israel.
Gita Kaufmann, from the Association for Survivors of the Concentration Camps and Ghettos, stated that "the Finance Ministry is probably hoping to postpone the law for a few years in order to save the money it would require."
Survivor organizations have pointed blame at Finance Minister Avraham Hirschson, who at many times in the past been a champion of survivors' concerns. Many claim that since assuming the post of Finance Minister, Hirschson has forgotten about the survivors.
Hirschson's spokesperson stated that the implementation of the law was dealt with by experts within the ministry, and Hirschson was not familiar with it.
'A symbolic act to show the respect of the state'
The second role of the law was to formulate an official list of all Holocaust survivors living in Israel today.
The law's initiator, MK Yuri Stern (Yisrael Beitenu), stated that the law represents a symbolic act that will show the esteem the state has for "an entire generation that lost their identity, their possessions, and their homelands."
Stern recommended that the state send certificates of appreciation to all Holocaust survivors alive in Israel.
During preparations of the wording of the law, it became clear that prescribing a benefit package is complicated by the fact that the term "Holocaust survivor" does not appear anywhere within Israeli law books.
"To this day, the State of Israel doesn't recognize Holocaust survivors and doesn't even stipulate where and when the Holocaust took place", stated attorney Hali Meggido, the committee's legal counsel.
Through cooperation with Dr. Robert Rosen from Yad Vashem and a representative from the survivors' organizations, Noach Flug, president of the organization of Holocaust survivors in Israel, decided to define survivors in a manner more broadly than traditionally accepted.
Flug stipulated that a survivor is any resident of Israel that lived part of the war in a state under the control of the Nazis or their allies, or that managed to flee said countries.
A special committee is set to discuss "grey areas" in the determination of what is a Holocaust survivor. For example, are former residents of areas of North Africa that came under Nazi occupation to be considered Holocaust survivors?
According to expert opinions, there are today around a half million survivors living in Israel, including 150,000 former residents of North Africa who lived under the rule of France's Pro-Nazi Vichy regime.
The same experts have ruled that former residents of Syria and Lebanon, both of which had been under pro-Nazi rule, are not to be considered Holocaust survivors, as these states did not initiate anti-Jewish laws during WWII.