Israeli woman denied social benefits for visiting Palestinian husband

[Violet_Crumble]

S. was born in Lod, where she lived all her life and is raising her four children. Her only sin, apparently, was in marrying a resident of the territories.

That was enough for the National Insurance Institute to continually investigate her, withhold her social benefits and humiliate her.

S., now in her eighth month of pregnancy, has two girls in kindergarten in Lod. She has worked in the city, owns an apartment and pays her bills on time.

She is also a client at the local Health Maintenance Organization and well-baby clinics in her neighborhood.

However, despite all these facts, the NII has determined that S. does not live in Lod, but rather in the territories with her husband, who is not allowed into Israel.

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1094651.html

[BolivarianHero]

1. Just another day in the Hebrew theocracy...

And another reason why all religious police states must fall, whether they call the ultimate reality Yhwh, Allah, or something else entirely.

[Violet_Crumble]

2. Israel's not a theocracy...

It's got some ultrareligious types in the ranks of the govt, but it's a secular state...

[sabbat hunter]

3. Israel

is neither a police state nor a religious (theocracy) state.

[LeftishBrit]

5. Israel isn't a theocracy; this is about nationalism and nasty bureacracy, not theocracy

[IndianaGreen]

10. There is no difference in the goals of the rabbinate in Jerusalem and the ayatollahs in Qom

Religion! How it dominates man's mind, how it humiliates and degrades his soul. God is everything, man is nothing, says religion. But out of that nothing God has created a kingdom so despotic, so tyrannical, so cruel, so terribly exacting that naught but gloom and tears and blood have ruled the world since gods began.

-- Emma Goldman
Anarchism: What It Really Stands For (1910)

[LeftishBrit]

11. Even if that were true about the goals...

the difference is that the ayatollahs are actually running government, and the rabbis are not.

[IndianaGreen]

12. The rabbis and the religious have disproportionate influence in relation to their numbers

Most of them live on the public dole, while imposing their ridiculous ancient views on everyone else.

[LeftishBrit]

13. Disproportionate to their numbers yes (because of the strict PR system)

But still nothing like a real theocracy.

The Christian Right have a disproportionate influence in America; but it's still not a theocracy.

[LeftishBrit]

4. Disgusting. Good at least that this has got some publicity...

maybe it will lead the authorities to change their minds.

[IndianaGreen]

6. Some people are in denial about the inherent racism in the belief

that there is a GAWD that gave real estate to the Jewish people. The same GAWD that was AWOL during the Holocaust, by the way.

[Name removed]

8. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[IndianaGreen]

9. I reject all claims of religious or national exceptionalism.

GAWD died in Auschwitz! The infantile belief that there was a Supreme Being out there in charge of human history and events died in the ashes of the Holocaust. As Paul of Tarsus wrote in one of his rare lucid moments:

When I was a child, I spoke and thought and reasoned as a child. But when I grew up, I put away childish things.

-- Paul First Letter to Corinthians

It was also the last line in the film Elmer Gantry.

[aranthus]

7. Hopefully she will sue the HMO

They'll think up any reason to deny benefits, but this is absolutely bad faith.

[azurnoir]

14. So this has been tried twice before

where does the clinic mail these letters to? It's bad enough that Israel will not allow her to live in Israel with her husband, but now if she visits him she's a citizen of the West Bank?

[henank]

15. As an experienced "consumer" of Israeli bureaucracy

I can see exactly where the snafu has occurred. The woman is a resident of Lod BUT she's married to a West Bank resident. As far as Israeli bureaucracy is concerned, a woman's address is always identical to her husband's. If he lives in the West Bank, so does she. You can stand on your head and go blue in the face; the bureaucrats don't care. And even if they do, there's not a lot they can do. I guess she could appeal though I don't know how far she'll get.

I've just had a fight with the bureaucracy myself today so I know whereof I speak...

[azurnoir]

16. What I do not get then is why would her husband

even come into it he is not an Israeli citizen and does not reside in Israel, what happens to an Israeli couple Jewish or not when they are legally separated but not divorced?