By JAN VAN MILUpdated: JULY 10, 2018 17:23
Two weeks ago, toward the end of the school year, teachers and pupils at the school of my daughter, the Mevo’ot Iron School in Ein Shemer, came up with the idea of organizing a food drive for the kindergartens of children of the refugees in south Tel Aviv. Sounds like a noble idea, doesn’t it?Apparently, for Ms. May Golan it looked different. On her Facebook page, Ms. Golan, a “political activist”, published a rant written by (according to Golan) a good friend of hers, who took issue with the scandalous behavior of the Mevo’ot Iron school and it pupils who had the nerve to feel for young innocent children who do from day to day not know where their next meal will come from.Of course, Ms. Golan is well known for her abhorrence of the presence of the 'black infiltrators' in our midst and feels deeply for the plight of the inhabitants of the South Tel Aviv neighborhoods where these sub humans have taken up residence.And it is also well-known, that Ms. Golan is riding the wave of disgust and resistance against the refugees and hopes to run for the Knesset or other lucrative functions in Israel’s public life, using and exploiting the hatred being built up against these unfortunate people. The political platform through which she is making this attempt, with such characters as Baruch Marzel, Itamar Ben Gvir and Michael Ben Ari is indeed a suitable one for her purpose in that is has shown signs of racism and xenophobia in the past.But let’s return to the initiative of the Mevo’ot Iron school and the reactions on the Facebook page of Ms. Golan. The original post, (by the supposed friend of Ms. Golan) makes a long list of (worthy) charity options, including IDF soldiers without families, (and those with families), Ethiopian Israelis, autistic children, single mothers, underprivileged youth and others, to which no donations are made and not support is given, while all those are close by and their only sin is that they are legal citizens and Jewish. But of course, the ONLY sin of the refugee children is that they are not Jewish, right, Ms. Golan? Or is the color of their skin also considered a sin?Some of the comments are definitely also sparks of intelligence and humanity:“Those illegal infiltrator children! While we donate for them, their parents rape and kill old Holocaust survivors in South Tel Aviv”“Shame on all those leftists! To what shit did they get! Shit into their faces!”And maybe the weirdest of all: “No donations to terrorists”The school, a well-respected high school where parents with pleasure send their children to be educated, is called a radical leftist institution, an anarchistic, leftist radical school and its management is not left out of the picture either.What really happened? A group of teachers and children at a rural high school were moved by the plight of a group of small kindergarten-age children, who, if the kindergarten they attend during the day cannot give them a warm meal, they most likely will not get one that day, and decided to make a small gesture. Young adults, who decided that they want to do something. After all, these refugee children, even if their parents are thieves, murderers, rapists of holocaust survivors, and what have you, these children are innocent victims in a bad world who had the misfortune of being born (as most of them are) in a country where being black and not Jewish will deny you anything and everything.No doubt, the suggestions for donations made by Ms. Golan (or her friend) are worthy and important, and not because they are in the neighborhood and Jewish, but because they are people in need, who do not receive what they need and rightly deserve from their country and their government.Overall, social institutions in Israel are severely lacking proper funding, the number of people living in poverty is higher than in any other country of the OECD, and more than 18% of Israelis live below the official poverty line, with one in three Israeli children going to bed hungry. Health care is deteriorating at an alarming rate with waiting times for even the simplest procedures being weeks and sometimes months, with a severe lack of medical personnel, both physicians and support personnel, because of a lack of available funds.But nevertheless, Israel continues the occupation of the West Bank, an enterprise that has cost anywhere from 75 to 150 billion dollars thus far and every year billions more being poured in. (The numbers are not very well known and will be disputed no matter what, but no doubt many, many billions have been wasted on an illegal occupation that should have ended long ago).Imagine what could have been done with all that money! Jewish children would not go hungry, health care would be on a level of advanced countries, holocaust survivors would not have to choose between warming their house or buying medicine, education could be really free (not like it is now when it is called free but the parent contribution will easily reach several hundreds of shekels a month), even Ethiopians would be taken care of and their remaining family would be brought in from Africa where they have been waiting for years. The situation in south Tel Aviv is extremely problematic but this is mainly so because the Israeli government has steadfastly refused to do anything about it. The only humane solution, allowing these people to stay and rebuild their lives somewhere in Israel, will never be accepted by Israel for the simple reason that these people are not Jewish. But no less important for the Israeli politician including aspiring politicians like Ms. Golan, is the opportunity to step into the spotlight and be seen as the savior of south Tel Aviv, by ranting against the refugees, the politicians supporting them, the organizations trying to help them, and if necessary and deemed useful also against children wanting to help toddlers that go hungry.The government recently announced new measures to help the people of south Tel Aviv, but it appears that also this “effort” is not much more than a political maneuver designed to continue to mislead people and to avoid having to do the only thing that should be done.So, while Ms. Golan got a lot of likes on her Facebook page, a large number of people were able to vent their frustration and show off their racism, xenophobia and (with apologies) their stupidity, the simple fact is that there are still people in this country that feel that being human comes before being Jewish, that being in a position to help a fellow human being (Jewish or not Jewish) is a privilege and not dependent on politics, and that a child should not go hungry no matter who his parents are, what his race is or what color his skin. And as long as there are people like those in this country, not all hope is lost.