75-year old Holocaust survivor Avri Michal has use of only one arm and one leg, but has been forced to spend the last few months taking on the Health Ministry in an effort to receive funding for an electric wheelchair.

Despite the difficulties faced by Michal - who hid from the Nazis when they stormed his native Czechoslovakia and moved to Israel in 1949, at the age of 17 - the ministry has rejected his request for an electric wheelchair. Such wheelchairs, it contends, are provided only to people under the age of 65, and only if they are active outside the home.

"It's not logical," said Michal, who has taken a loan to finance an electric wheelchair but is having a hard time meeting the payments. "The older a person is, the harder it is for him to get around outside. What, from the age of 64 I have to be a prisoner in the home?"