Subscribe to Print Edition | Tue., October 27, 2009 Cheshvan 9, 5770 | | Israel Time: 01:39 (EST+7)
Haaretz israel news English
web haaretz.com
Jewish World Haaretz Toolbar
Diplomacy
Defense Opinion National
Print Edition
Car Rental
Focus U.S.A. Strenger than Fiction Business Travel Magazine Week's End Anglo File Books
Share |
How the Defense Ministry funds its overseas sprees
By Orly Vilnai

The Paris Air Show at Le Bourget is the showcase where we display our best technology, and where the best of our pilots and leaders like to hang out. And since it's a showcase, we don't put our flawed goods on display there - the stuff on which shekels were saved to cover the cost of Ehud Barak's luxury suite at the Paris Intercontinental Le Grande. Demagoguery, I hear you cry. But anyone familiar with all the people who fruitlessly bang their heads against the walls of the Defense Ministry's budget department cannot help being infuriated.

Take the case of Maria Aman, the Palestinian girl who, when she was three years and nine months old, lost most of her family to an Israel Defense Forces missile that also left her paralyzed and dependent on a respirator.
Advertisement

For three years, Hamdi Aman has been caring for his daughter in an Israeli hospital, and for three years, the Defense Ministry has been promising to provide him with money to rent an apartment nearby. But no money ever arrived.

Or take Miriam Adler, whose son has been suffering from a psychological illness since his army service, leaving him dependent on her care. But the Defense Ministry refuses to recognize his disability and has not provided any assistance at all.

Many disabled IDF veterans have to wage similar battles. They are begging for help. But when it comes to them, the ministry keeps its purse strings tightly closed.

This week, Meni Glass came in second in a wheelchair ballroom dancing contest. What began as a rehabilitation exercise has become one of the few joys in his life. In 1973, he sustained a back injury while serving in the paratroops, but he continued serving as a reservist, in both the Yom Kippur War later that year and the 1982 Lebanon War.

In 1984, he was wounded again during a combat medics course, and he decided to claim compensation from the Defense Ministry, which granted him a 20 percent disability rating. But over the years, he contracted cancer and his back injury worsened. So today he is confined to a wheelchair, and has been recognized by the National Insurance Institute as unable to work.

As such, he knew he was entitled to a special payment for needy disabled IDF veterans, of NIS 1,500 a month. He filed a claim at the Tiberias office of the ministry's rehab department, which sent him to a medical panel. He had all the necessary paperwork attesting to his permanent loss of ability to work, plus an additional medical opinion and a document from a hospice confirming that he used morphine and marijuana for medical purposes.

But the panel, which he says consisted of only one doctor, decided that he was capable of working. Accordingly, some of his privileges were withdrawn, and with them over NIS 5,000 a month that he had been receiving from the Defense Ministry.

"It's hard for me to look at Ehud's Barak's smile," he says today. "I haven't smiled for ages."

True, not everyone turned down by a medical panel is necessarily a victim of injustice. But it certainly isn't necessary for Defense Ministry bigwigs to sleep in luxury suites in Paris while the Air Show is on. They could easily pop over to Paris, say hello, and come back to look after all the people here who really need "a strong defense minister," in the words of Barak's campaign slogan.

The Defense Ministry's response: "The above invalid is recognized by the Defense Ministry as having a 50 percent disability as a result of his military service. In addition, he receives supplementary payments from the National Insurance Institute for disabilities that are not connected to his military service."

Good-bye asbestos

Last week, Haaretz carried a report about residents of the Shabal neighborhood in Pardes Hannah who have been living for years under roofs made of crumbling asbestos sheets, fully aware that they are endangering their health. Thirteen residents of the tiny neighborhood have contracted cancer, and many others have lung diseases. Repeated appeals to the government's Amidar housing company, which owns the buildings, had no effect.

Last week, after the report appeared in Haaretz and on a television program, a solution was apparently found, and a roofing contractor is slated to come to Pardes Hannah.

One call to Housing Minister Ariel Attias and it's good-bye asbestos. One hour after the call, Attias knew all the details; within a day, the ministry had found the almost NIS 1 million necessary to fix the roofs.

Next week, Attias promised, work will begin. It's easy to believe he really means it. He isn't doing it for us, it's for the good of the residents. A rare thing in these parts.
PROMOTION: Mamilla Hotel
Bookmark to del.icio.us  
 
Hamas war call
Hamas political leader: War will settle Jerusalem dispute, not talks
J Street's challenge
J Street convenes in Washington, but can it take on AIPAC?
Special Offers
Advertisement
Eldan Rent a Car
Israel's leading car rental company offers you a 20% discount on online reservations
Date Local Jewish Singles
Ready to meet your match? Join Jdate today!
Junkyard
Junk a car - get free towing nationwide and a tax-deductible receipt
More Headlines
22:56 Abbas to Obama: I'll quit, there's no chance for peace with Netanyahu
21:30 Egypt boycott of Lieberman pushes off Med Union summit
15:59 Iran FM plays down threat of pre-emptive IDF strike
21:37 Barak: Obama envoy Mitchell due in Israel this week
22:31 IDF Chief: Israeli inquiry into Gaza war proper response to Goldstone
16:57 What Netanyahu can give himself, and Israel, for his 60th birthday
22:32 Netanyahu, Livni meet after months of severed ties
18:08 Peace Now director barred from Knesset after Borat-style video
22:24 TV ROUND-UP: Netanyahu, Livni rekindle ties; Turks protest against Israel
15:01 Iran hints at acceptance of nuclear deal with West
15:39 Peres: Unlike Hamas, Israel protects its children
13:47 Arab MK brands Lieberman's party 'fascist' over Nakba bill
19:22 Israel Unposed / Peres and peers 'Facing Tomorrow'
09:42 Soupy Sales, Rod Serling: Prophets who raised a generation
22:02 Religious Zionist rabbis: Ascend the Temple Mount
22:05 Fox takes down provocative Bar Refaeli billboard
Home | TV | Print Edition | Diplomacy | Opinion | Arts & Leisure | Sports | Jewish World | Site rules |
| Advert: Recommended Restaurants | Makom: Engaging on Israel
| Search engine marketing
Haaretz.com, the online edition of Haaretz Newspaper in Israel, offers real-time breaking news, opinions and analysis from Israel and the Middle East. Haaretz.com provides extensive and in-depth coverage of Israel, the Jewish World and the Middle East, including defense, diplomacy, the Arab-Israeli conflict, the peace process, Israeli politics, Jerusalem affairs, international relations, Iran, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, the Palestinian Authority, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, the Israeli business world and Jewish life in Israel and the Diaspora.
© Copyright  Haaretz. All rights reserved