Looking for a reason to get up in the morning

Maurice Suissa is a lonely man. He is 58 years old, and lives alone in a small apartment in Be'er Sheva. Usually he has to look hard to find as reason to get up in the morning.

It all began when he was 13, two years after coming to Israel, he says.

The school nurse referred him to an orthopedic surgeon at the Soroka Medical Center because his arm and leg were shaking, and the doctor diagnosed him with polio.

Maurice left his studies and spent three years receiving treatment at Soroka. His social contacts dwindled, as did his self-confidence.

Later he was not called up for the army and he began working for anyone who was prepared to employ a disabled youth.

The National Insurance Institute (NII) recognized him as 100 percent disabled.

Two years ago, Suissa learned that the state had decided to recognize polio victims who until then had not received compensation.

The polio law, on the face of it, is one of the best laws legislated in this country.

It stipulates that the state must pay a one-time grant of NIS 120,000 to anyone who has a disability of up to 95 percent because of the disease.

Anyone who has 100 percent disability will get 50 percent of the average monthly wage, some NIS 4,000.

Fair and just, and in particular, a potential economic lifeline for Suissa. However, one tiny restriction appeared in the law - the words "in Israel."

Only someone who contracted the disease in Israel is entitled to the compensation.

Originally people said that the reason was to prevent Palestinians from demanding compensation, but now it is clear that it refers to people who were born before the declaration of the state and people like Suissa, who the NII does not recognize as a polio victim because he fell ill before coming to Israel, even if he was only diagnosed here.

Suissa has documents in which Soroka hospital testifies that he fell ill in Israel in 1964, but the NII is stubbornly sticking to its version. "Mr. Suissa was examined at the first level in December 2007 and at the second in March 2008," a spokesperson wrote in response. "He was rejected at both levels and it was decided that he did not become ill with polio in Israel."

We approached attorney Eitan Peleg, an expert in struggles against the NII, and he agreed to deal with Suissa's case on a voluntary basis.

Another few years of court hearings and perhaps there will be a response. The question is whether Suissa will still have strength.

If he would only listen

Interior Minister Eli Yishai has more than once in his political career waged a struggle over social issues, and in quite a few cases he has been successful. Two components make up the common denominator of all his struggles - that they relate to a certain sector of the population and that they involve expertise. Yishai always knew what he was talking about. How sad it is that in his struggle against the children of foreign workers he prefers not to know and not to see.

Last week he boycotted the Knesset meeting to which Meretz MK Nitzan Horowitz brought some completely Israeli "foreign children," sabras who speak fluent Hebrew. The angry minister declared he would not participate in a theater of the absurd. "The social organizations tell the foreigners that if they have children they will be able to remain here," he said in reply to my question why he was waging such a stubborn war against them. "We have to put an end to this. Let them go live in their own homes in their own countries where they have family and a life, not here."

"Have you ever met a foreign child?" I asked. "I meet single-parent families, soldiers, disabled people, homeless people," he said. He is not prepared to meet with the children of foreign workers or to hear them. Perhaps because the minister knows deep down that it is not the social organizations that are inciting the foreigners, but those who whisper to him about demographic balances.

He knows that if he listens, he will hear children who dream of serving in the Israel Defense Forces and defend the state of Israel; who genuinely have nowhere else to go and know no other place, family or friends. That this is not a matter of demagoguery but of real life for these hardworking people who are loyal and not violent, and love the country. I know because I have met them, not all of them but enough to know that we must not expel them. There is enough time until the end of the school year, Mr. Yishai, for you to go to meet them and to listen to them for a moment. It is not possible that you have a big heart only for the families with numerous children in your sector, but you have no place there for the children of others.