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E-mailAn Israeli woman has been denied public benefits for years all for the “crime” of marrying a Palestinian man and visiting him in the occupied West Bank.
The Israeli woman is identified simply as S. in the Israeli daily Ha’aretz. She is from the town of Lod, which is a mixed Arab-Jewish town in Israel.
The married mother of four has been denied public benefits by the Israeli National Insurance Institute, which has also humiliated the woman for years.
[Israeli Arabs. Courtney Kealey/Boston Globe.]
The NII denied her and her children health insurance and child allowances on the false grounds that S. does not live in Lod. S. owns an apartment in Lod, has two children in Lod school and works in the city’s Health Maintenance Organization.
In spite of all this, an NII investigation 14 months ago ruled that S. does not live in Lod and that it is her responsible to appeal the investigation’s conclusion and prove her residency. When she appealed, a representative at her local NII yelled at her and called her a liar who is just having children for the purpose of welfare handouts.
A worker from the legal aid group Community Advocacy accompanied S. to the NII with the appeal and a thick file of documents, which the NII rejected the same day.
Sigalit Givon-Fadida, director of the Lod Community Advocacy branch, said dozens of their clients had been humiliated by NII clerks, which regularly “prevented people from being innocent until proven guilty.”
Even though her identity is not identified, it is obvious that S. is an Arab citizen of Israel. This is how Israel treats 23% of its citizenry all because they are non-Jews.
An apartheid state, indeed!
RSS 
That’s your conclusion, based on facts not in evidence. My own personal experience with the NII is typical: the NII is always reluctant to pay out money.
In 2002, I was diagnosed with osteoarthritis in both hip joints that required total hip replacements. After a long and extremely exhausting process, that included a number of interviews and medical exams by NII doctors (prior to surgery, when each step was an agony I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy) they decided to grant me a “handicapped allowance” of NIS 2,900 per month—when my income before I had to stop work had been over NIS 10,000 monthly, with NII premiums paid in full.
After two hip replacements and rehab, without any possibility of returning to my profession as an industrial engineer, I had to fall back on a secondary occupation as a freelance technical writer and translator. Without warning, the NII stopped the handicapped allowance, even though my income in the first startup months was less than the handicapped allowance.
An appeal taking 11 months did nothing to restore the handicapped allowance, even though there were additional diagnoses of a knee problem and osteoarthritis in my right shoulder in the interim.
The bottom line is that the NII does not want to pay out money if a person is working—and if a working person lives under the poverty level, allowances are not granted by the NII, but by the Ministry of Social Affairs and Social Services, another organization entirely—and a different procedure with different criteria.
I won’t dispute the treatment the article claimed she was given—but I’ve found over the years that bureaucrats tend to return the same kind of behavior they receive. When I was younger and more hot-headed, I would shout and bang on the table—and got shouted at in return. When I speak softly and politely, I get the same courtesy in return—and better results, for the most part. That being the case, I have to wonder if the lady in question came in shouting demands or not… and the article doesn’t say.
In any case, she is much better off in Lod working for ”enemies” than some citizens of Germany and Australia on benefits with no work during generations at all.
And what about your surrounding, Marko?
First, she isn’t giving birth to soldiers. She is an Israeli citizen giving birth to Israeli-born children.
And she isn’t working for the ”enemy,” maybe you didn’t read the post but she works for an Israeli health firm.
And what about my surrounding?
The article is about an apartheid system in place which is so aggressive it has been applied on this Israeli lady because she did dare to marry a Palestinian man.
Now think how this system is affecting the Palestinians in Israel and the occupied territories, and then think how this led to the creation of Hamas and other resistance groups.
And please get some education and read a little bit more about any subject before throwing such stupid comments.