Has Anything Changed?

Early Years of the Zionist State

■ THE STORY [by Greer Fay Cashman, JPost (Left of Center), August 21, Comments and Features] of mainly Yemenite but also other children who were members of families taken to transit camps in the early years of the state, and who disappeared from hospitals where they had been taken by their parents for treatment of mild illnesses, has still not been resolved. Parents were told that relatively healthy children had died, but were seldom shown a grave. In some cases, so-called graves had no bodies. Now there is another horrific story which is coming to light not for the first time, but perhaps in greater detail than in the past.

Under Israeli law, social workers have unbelievable authority to separate infant children from their biological families, particularly in cases where the parents are minors, regardless of whether adult family members are prepared to take responsibility for the welfare of the mother and child.

Some of the draconian adoption laws have been amended, most notably the law that made it a criminal offense for adoptees to publicly state that they had been adopted. The law permits adoptees to apply to see their files once they have turned 18, but according to an in-depth feature in last Friday’s Israel Hayom, the files were censored with important pieces of information edited out, including the disappearance of letters and photos brought to child welfare offices by biological parents and siblings.

Moreover, administrative staff in child welfare offices deliberately lied to adoptees who were trying to locate their biological families. Very few of these stories have a happy ending. Worse still, because of the lies told to adoptees, they can never get past the trauma of possibly being abandoned by their biological mothers even if they had the most loving and supportive adoptive parents. There are numerous cases in which biological parents have come to child welfare offices every year on the birthday of the baby they were forced to give up and have deposited letters and photographs, assuring the infant that they can’t wait for him or her to turn 18 and to begin searching for their roots. Most of these letters were not filed, but were thrown in the trash.

In researching this painful and immoral story, Hagit Ron-Rabinowitz interviewed several adoptees. The story with the happiest ending is that of Sitvanit Atzmon, who when she went to open her file, was told by a social worker that there was no chance that anyone would ever look for her. The social worker told her a pack of lies, and caused the 18-year-old Sitvanit so much anguish that she decided that there was no reason for her to remain in Israel, and after completing her army duty, she migrated to Canada. Sitvanit had been conceived when both her parents were minors. Although her paternal aunt was willing to take responsibility for raising her and giving a home to both her parents, this was unacceptable to the social worker who separated the parents and sent Sitvanit’s mother, Aliza, to some facility for pregnant minor unwed mothers to await the birth.

Aliza barely had time to set eyes on her baby before the infant was taken away from her. She was given papers to sign for what she thought was foster care, but in fact was permission for adoption and her agreement to relinquish all claims to the child. A similar document was given to Sitvanit’s father, Moshe Buzaglo. He too was unaware of what he was signing. It was a pre-cellphone era. In fact, very few people even had ground lines, so Moshe and Aliza lost touch with each other. By chance they met up again in the army and soon after their discharge, Aliza was again pregnant. The couple were not about to lose a second baby, and immediately got married. They had a son and later a daughter, and every year on Sitvanit’s birthday they went to the child welfare offices and left a letter and photographs to be placed in her file so that she would know that she had a family that was waiting to be reunited with her.

Close to Sitvanit’s 18th birthday, Aliza sat down with her two younger children, Hanan and Moran, and told them about Sitvanit. They were thrilled to know that they had an older sister and they too began writing to her just before her birthday. Year after year they waited for her to make contact, but she never did. After 20 years had passed with no sign of Sitvanit, Moran, at her own initiative, hired Anat Kirsch, a private detective who apparently had connections in all the right places. The story doesn’t say how she located Sitvanit, only that she telephoned her to Canada very soon afterward, told her the truth about her background and how her family had been seeking her for years. Sitvanit could hardly believe her ears. “I want to speak to them immediately,” she declared. The date was March 2, 2016. In Israel it was 10:30 p.m. when Moran’s phone rang. Kirsch was at the other end of the line. “Moran, I found her,” she said. “You can talk to her right now.

Four months later, Sitvanit arrived in Israel to meet her siblings and her biological parents. It had taken 40 years for this reunion to happen. She was introduced to her extended family as well, and since then she is in daily contact with her parents, her siblings and other family members. Some of the other stories are much more harrowing, though in one case where a mother and daughter were unsuccessfully looking for each other, the mother died, but the daughter somehow became reunited with her sister, who told her that their mother had never stopped trying to find her and when she knew that she had incurable cancer, had left a long detailed letter for her, convinced that one day her two daughters would find each other.

Here, too, the social workers had lied. There seemed to be some policy of keeping adoptees permanently separated from their biological parents. Today it’s much easier because of DNA testing. There is no longer any need to go to child welfare authorities because genealogical search organizations conduct DNA tests, and presumably one day will exchange data on who is seeking who without necessarily disclosing the names of the seekers. They will simply make DNA results accessible to each other in the same way that hospital records are made accessible to health clinics – and there will be a little less misery in the world.


The Zionist State Today

“Our only priority is the welfare of the baby and we are trying to find the best solution,”  

HELP THE MOTHER TO REGAIN HER FOOTING 

DON”T TAKE AWAY HER BABY!
(after mother’s claims, with all the worldwide ‘child-trafficking’ being exposed 
why would Israel get involved?)

HELP ME SAVE MY BABY 

GoFundMe: MY STORY:  I am josephine Gillan and I'm an actress from the HBO series game of thrones, I'm not currently working as it's finished now and I've been busy with motherhood, I came to Israel to have my baby, my beloved daughter is almost 8 months old, I raised and cared for her from birth, when she was 5 months old the Israeli social services decided my baby should stay with my friend while I go to therepy for post natal depression, my friend has been amazing and her and her amazing family love and cares for my daughter Gloria with a true love to me and her. 3 nights ago the social services came in the night at 12:30am! With the police and kidnapped my daughter and took her to another family! I'm not allowed to see her or have contact! I have no idea where she is!! I was not there at the time and was not aware of what they had done! It's absolutely outrageous! I have not done anything wrong and neither has my friend who was caring from her! They threatened to take my friend to jail if she doesn't give our Gloria! They marched her out with police either side of her and took her away into the night! what Israeli social services have done is illegal and I'm fighting to get her back! But unfortunately the legal costs I can't afford right now! Good lawyers are costly but worth it for my baby to have a chance of happiness and love that she deserves! So I'm reaching out for donations to please help raise enough money to bring her back to where she is safe and loved! No child should be without there parent! Especially if they are good and care for the child devotedly! I appreciate you reading this and please find it in your heart to help and also your prayers would mean alot also! I'm heartbroken at the moment and just want to see and be with my baby girl again 

timesofisrael:  British-Israeli “Game of Thrones” actress Josephine Gillan has accused the Israeli government of kidnapping and trafficking her daughter after child welfare authorities removed her daughter from her care earlier this month. When she first got the part, she described in an interview with the Daily Mail how the role had saved her from a past of childhood sexual abuse, working in pornography, drugs and prostitution.

Gillan, who is Jewish, immigrated to Israel last year just before her child was born. Gillan . . . said in a series of tweets Thursday that her eight-month-old daughter had been “kidnapped” by the “sick and twisted” social services in Israel. Gillan says she left the child in the care of a good friend while she received treatment for postpartum depression, but has since recovered. Earlier this month, social services took Gillan’s baby from a family that had been looking after the baby and placed her in foster care, saying it was in the best interest of the child. Gillan said she was “sick with worry” that her daughter would be sold into sex slavery by traffickers. She also liked and retweeted a series of tweets calling Israel “racist” and a “terror state that pretends to be a democracy.”

“Three nights ago the social services came in the night at 12:30am! With the police and kidnapped my daughter and took her to another family! I’m not allowed to see her or have contact! I have no idea where she is,”  

“I was not there at the time and was not aware of what they had done! It’s absolutely outrageous,” Gillan wrote. “I have not done anything wrong and neither has my friend who was caring from her.” 

On Tuesday, Gillan appealed for help in getting her daughter back, and launched a GoFundMe page to help with legal fees.

Israel’s Channel 12 news reported […] that one of the reasons she moved to Israel was because she feared British welfare authorities would take away her child. “Eight months ago she gave birth in Israel and began to raise her child under close supervision from the social services in her community and with the help of a friend,” the report quoted a person close to the situation as saying. “At a certain stage she left the baby with a friend and flew to the UK for an extended period, which caused the intervention of welfare authorities and the courts.”

The report said that Gillan’s child was removed from her friend’s care after a court order was issued, and that a hearing on the matter would be held next week. Channel 12 said that Gillan returned to Israel to fight the order.

Gillan posted a video showing authorities taking away the baby at night while neighbors yelled at them and a woman sobbed. [twitter video unfortunately, the video in Ivrit is not clear]

The Welfare and Social Services Ministry has declined to comment on the specifics of the situation, citing the privacy of the child and the necessary secrecy of such cases. However, it noted that the case was being dealt with by various departments including the ministry’s international department which was in contact with British welfare authorities.

“Our only priority is the welfare of the baby and we are trying to find the best solution,” the statement said.

Maybe the Social Services has changed? And maybe they are really doing the best for these babies/children? There are many questions surrounding this story; and maybe the baby should be given to the father’s family to raise? Pretty little girl looks ‘yemenite’.  Children taken from a parent should ALWAYS be placed with other family members to raise; this is both genetically and culturally appropriate, and humane. 
_____________________________

(The original article on timesofisrael was written in a sketchy manner, so I rearranged sentences to read intelligently); did not change language. [ my comments in brackets ]