- We Do Not Love Children
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- Contrary to popular belief not only are children in Israel
not a favored group, but they are a deprived group. The conclusions of
the Rothlevy Commission must be implemented immediately.
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- After ten years of hard work by dozens of experts, assisted
by hundreds of witnesses including many children, the state commission
for the examination of children?s rights and their enshrinement in law,
headed by Judge Saviona Rothlevy, submitted its conclusions and recommendations.
Yet the story is far from over.
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- It is very easy to declare love for children, without
always meaning it, and it is easy to make promises to them, especially
in the future tense. It is much harder to commit and to do, in the present,
here and now.
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- The rights of boys and girls are not to be taken for
granted. For many years many societies viewed children as the property
of their families. Only in the last years has awareness emerged for the
child as a full-fledged person, as Janusz Korczak wrote: ?Not a small world
but a whole world; not a person in the making, but a person right now,
in the present?. The recognition of the child as a full-fledged person,
who has a present of his own, has served as the basis for the development
of the concept of children?s rights. Certain rights were granted to children
because they were recognized as persons, and because every person and citizen
has such rights. Other rights were given especially to children, and only
to them, to protect them, because they cannot always take care of themselves
or defend themselves.
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- Here in Israel, we often think and say, children are
happy. We love children. But when we talk about children?s rights, we must
not and cannot be satisfied with general and abstract declarations of love
for children. The very recognition of the fact that children too have rights
is an important step for all children and for all of humanity, but it is
not enough.
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- As opposed to the myths, Israel of the last years is
not a country that loves its children. Far from it. Children in Israel
are not just a neglected group, but usually they are a deprived, exploited
group, devoid of constitutional and actual rights.
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- It is so easy in this country to hurt them, to use them,
to humiliate them, to cut back what little is given to them, to ignore
them and even to go as far as sweepingly condemning them as a group that
has everything and gives so little.
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- The Rothlevy commission posed a series of challenges
for Israeli society and its institutions. Boldly, on a grand scale and
systematically. There is no doubt this is a revolution our children and
our whole society deserve and need. But the real test is still ahead of
us: the test of action and results, the test of the present. Will we again
be satisfied with mere declarations and empty promises? Will we again postpone
everything to better times in a future that might never come?
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- The writer is the head of the National Council for the
Child
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- http://www.maarivintl.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=article&articleID=5632
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