The Israel Brief – 12 August 2019 – Terrorists who killed Dvir Sorek caught. Clashes on Temple Mount. Malfunctions at Ben Gurion Airport.
The Israel Brief – 13 August 2019 – Crackdown on Binary options company. El Al flight attendant dies from measles. Election drama.
The Israel Brief – 14 August 2019 – Labelling Israeli wines controversy. IDF Bolster border with Gaza. Abbas snubs Republican lawmakers.
The Israel Brief – 15 August 2019 – Israel bars Tlaib and Omar from entering. Who will be the next Israeli Ambassador to UN? Druze officer appointed military secretary to President.
150 South African children will receive “Wheelchairs of Hope” from Israel!
By Tamar Lazarus acting co-president of WIZO South Africa
In South Africa, the statistics are grim. Children with disabilities are among the most neglected groups in the country and the majority of these children face enormous economic and social barriers that have an adverse impact on their physical, social and intellectual development and wellbeing.
The simple provision of a wheelchair is something completely out of reach for most!
Identifying the need to help, WIZO South Africa has joined forces with an Israeli NGO or non-profit, called WHEELCHAIRS OF HOPE to bring 150 child-size wheelchairs that will give these children the dignity of mobility.
A Moving Gesture. The Nelson Mandela Children’s Hospital Johannesburg, Gauteng, have received through WIZO South Africa, lightweight, reliable and child friendly wheelchairs from Israel.
“Wheelchairs of Hope”, is dedicated to providing children in developing countries with lightweight, reliable and child friendly wheelchairs. These wheelchairs have become more than instruments of mobility – they have become chariots of hope, helping these children to win battles and gain access not just to education but to friends and peers as well.
For some of these children, the only way to get around is to crawl.
“Our wheelchair is specifically designed for children, as we wish to empower education through mobility,” explained Pablo Kaplan who together with his life partner and co-worker Chava Rotshtein founded Wheelchairs of Hope in Israel in 2009.
“Mobility from early childhood is a gate to education. By giving access to education we create a new generation with better skills, confidence and hope.”
Prime Movers. Pablo Kaplan who with Chave Chava Rotshtein founded ‘Wheelchairs of Hope’ in Israel in 2009.
In 2013, Kaplan and Rotshtein presented their idea at the opening day of the United Nations General Assembly and were selected to serve on UNICEF’s task force for assistive technologies.
This inspired WIZO South Africa to ensure that we could help as many of our vulnerable children as possible.
WIZO Cape Town recently donated four wheelchairs to the Paediatric Oncology wards at the Red CrossWar Memorial Children’s Hospital and Tygerberg Hospital as part of its local outreach programme. This is just the latest in a series of wheelchair donations.
WIZO Impact. The writer Tamar Lazarus (right) with WIZO SA colleagues at Tygerberg Hospital in Cape Town.
The child-size chairs will give those patients who cannot walk, dignity, control and self-reliance, which are often compromised by having to rely on other people to move them around.
The wheelchairs are not just practical – but attractive. Aimed at children aged five to nine-years who are able to push themselves, these colourful, ergonomically designed wheelchairs are light-weight and robust to handle urban and country terrains. The ‘WHEELCHAIRS OF HOPE’ wheelchairs were developed by specialist Israeli doctors and engineers from ALYN Hospital, Israel’s leading paediatric and adolescent rehabilitation centre, with the simple wish to “empower education through mobility”.
A Touch Of Class. An Israeli ‘Wheelchair of Hope’ is seen here in a South African classroom.
From Israel With Love
The donation of these bright and colorful wheelchairs from Israel, offers these young South African children the life-changing gift of mobility, and self-reliance. They will also be a great help for staff and nurses who care for these precious youngsters.
We often take the ability to move in our home and community for granted – and with that, the ability to learn, interact with others, and participate in family life. We are so pleased that we are able to assist, for now, 150 children with mobility impairments, and give them these’ WHEELCHAIRS OF HOPE’ to enable them to lead active and fulfilling lives.”
So far, the recipients of the WHEELCHAIRS OF HOPE wheelchairs are:
Maitland Cottage Children’s Orthopaedic Hospital, Cape Town
Nelson Mandela Children’s Hospital, Johannesburg
Red Cross Hospital Paediatric Oncology ward
Tygerberg Hospital Paediatric ward
Charlotte Maxeke Hospital Oncology ward
Special school Bolwar
‘Give a Child a Family’ organisation, Margate
Open air school Durban
Athlone school for the blind
Individual children who otherwise would not have access
The Magnificent Six. Empowered by mobility, these smiling children at Harding Special School in Kwazulu Natal each with their Israeli wheelchairs donated by WIZO South Africa.
We know that the receipt of these wheelchairs from Israel will have a truly lifelong impact on these kids – and their entire family unit will be transformed by the gift of the basic human right of mobility.
A Kid On The Move. Young child on his Israeli Wheelchair of Hope’ inside the Paediatric Oncology Ward at Tygerberg Hospital in Cape Town.
WIZO SA will be seeking additional donors to become part of this excellent initiative.
If you would like to donate, or recommend a suitable recipient, please contact our offices 021 4646700 ext 131 or email us at wizosa@ctjc.co.za.
Tamar Lazarus is the acting co-President of WIZO South Africa
Freshman Democratic Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC) recently revealed her true feelings about Israel. During the radio interview on the 30 July on the “Ebro in the Morning” show based in New York, AOC concurred wholeheartedly with the program’s host that:
“…what’s going on with Israel and Palestine…is very, very, criminal, and it is very, very unjust.”
Freshman Democratic Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez discusses the Israeli-Palestinian conflict while on New York radio station Hot 97’s morning show “Ebro in the Morning” with Ibrahim “Ebro” Darden.
A few days following this interview where AOC added that Palestinians “have no choice” but to “RIOT” because they are “marginalized” by Israel, an 18-year-old yeshiva student and off-duty IDF soldier named Dvir Sorek was found stabbed to death near Kibbutz Migdal Oz in the West Bank. Sorek was neither armed nor in uniform when his body was found. Sorek was studying at a seminary as part of a program combining Torah studies and military service. He was last seen leaving Migdal Oz to buy books for his teachers.
Stabbed to death, 19-year-old yeshiva student and off-duty IDF soldier Dvir Sorek was found dead clutching the books of the famous Israeli author, David Grossman, a left-wing, secular, peace activist and a longtime supporter of the two-state solution.
While it’s highly unlikely that AOC has ever heard of Dvir Sorek, her words, coming as they do from an American Congresswoman carry extra weight and the danger of lending credence to the idea that attacking unarmed Israelis out of a feeling of being “marginalized” isn’t only understandable but justified.
“Once someone doesn’t have access to clean water, they have no choice but to riot, right?” Ocasio-Cortez rhetorically asked during the morning radio show.
By selectively overlooking horrific crimes if they’re perpetrated in the name of a fashionable cause, AOC is shaping up to be a 2019 version of the “useful idiot”, a term attributed to Vladimir Lenin, but crept into the political jargon of describing someone propagandizing for a cause without fully comprehending the cause’s goals.
Meanwhile, the reaction of pro-Israel advocacy groups to Ocasio-Cortez’s remarks was swift and ineffective. Matt Brooks, executive director of the Republican Jewish Coalition, stated that AOC’s comments come, “…from an intolerance of Jews and Israel that is unacceptable in the halls of Congress and in American political discourse.” Countering the outrageous statements of those who view Israel as uniquely wicked with statements expressing outrage at those statements does little if anything to make the moral case for Israel.
The way to defeat the Palestinian victimhood narrative that justifies terrorist attacks against Jews is for the Israeli government and its friends around the world to advocate for a more robust counter-terrorism policy. Once the Palestinian leadership in the West Bank is made to understand that its very survival depends on making compromises with Israel, a practical prospect for peace will become much more likely.
But for too long successive Israeli governments have bowed to international pressure to fight terrorism in a restrained, predictable manner. In the halls of the US Congress many of Israel’s harshest critics and even some of its erstwhile supporters repeatedly push Israel to fight the enemies at its gate in a proportional manner. While Israel should be able to respond immediately, so goes the conventional wisdom, it must only use enough force to reinstate the status quo.
Nearly 1,000 people attended the funeral of Israeli yeshivah student and IDF recruit Dvir Sorek, 19, in the Jewish settlement of Ofra on Aug. 8, 2019. Photo: Sraya Diamant/Flash90.
Such a doctrine only codifies the perpetuation of hostilities between Israel and the terrorist groups at its borders. Indeed, proportionality has greatly weakened Israel’s deterrence capability against terrorism, according to former IDF Chief of Staff and leader of the Blue and White Party Benny Gantz.
More broadly, friends of Israel who acquiesce to the country being held to such an unrealistic standard of conduct are also doing a great disservice to the many people around the world who are subjected to far greater crimes against humanity. In her radio interview AOC mentioned these communities: “…I’m talking about Latin America. I’m talking about all over the world.” But by lumping a democratic state like Israel in with some of the world’s worst human rights violators, the freshman Congresswoman is effectively providing cover for repressive regimes to perpetrate gross human rights violations with impunity.
A “useful idiot” indeed.
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and her fellow travelers have effectively wrapped the Palestinian narrative in the mantel of justice. To reclaim the moral high ground, Israel and its supporters should focus less on the proportionality of the Israel Defense Forces’ conduct and more on the rightness of the Jewish state’s cause. War is always a terrible last resort, yet it’s sometimes the only way to keep free countries free. As Thomas Jefferson said: “The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.”
In case AOC lost track: Young Dvir Sorek was a patriot.
Those who ended his life were tyrants.
Gidon Ben-Zvi is an accomplished writer whose work has appeared in The Jerusalem Post, The Times of Israel, the Algemeiner, American Thinker, the Jewish Journal, Israel Hayom, and United with Israel. Ben-Zvi blogs at Jerusalem State of Mind (jsmstateofmind.com).
A former Californian, the writer lives with his wife and four children in Israel.
*Title Picture: Dvir Sorek, 19, a yeshiva student and off-duty IDF soldier who was found stabbed to death outside a West Bank settlement on August 8, 2019 (Courtesy)
