28-Dec-12: Where is the hope? A reminder of why we do this

Some ten days ago, with the civil year winding down to its close, we thought it appropriate to re-publish an end-of-year call [it's here] that we had originally made six years earlier.

Here's how it starts:

We lost our child to an act of barbaric murder and incomprehensible hatred. Our response has been to create the Malki Foundation in our daughter's name and to raise money and distribute it very efficiently in a way that allows us to do a lot good. You can get the whole picture at the website of the Malki Foundation. But if you're click-resistant, here's the brief version.

For Israeli families (Jews, Christians, Moslems, Druze, others) who have a special-needs child like the little boy above being helped by his brother, we provide substantial subsidies to enable five kinds of therapy: physical, occupational, speech, water and horse-riding... The parents decide how much therapy, which therapies and which therapist. We aim to empower them, and certainly not to patronize or direct them. They get enough of that from the establishment.
We also provide long-term free loans of home-care equipment like beds, wheelchairs, walkers and standers. The goal, again, is to make home-care a real option for such families. 

In a country which has some fine institutional solutions, we believe that home care is and always will be the best option for a child with serious disabilities. For those who agree (not everyone), we want to help in our murdered daughter's name. We are doing this today for many hundreds of families with a special-needs child... [more]

And here's why we are mentioning it again.

The Jerusalem Post published an op ed piece yesterday by Prof. Samuel Heilman, Distinguished Professor of Sociology at Queens College in New York (which happens to be Frimet's alma mater). Entitled "Where is the hope?", his short essay [online here] mentions a report that very recently went to air on the BBC

in which a Gaza teacher describes the “therapy” provided for young Palestinian children traumatized by the eight days of bombing and fire rained upon them by Israel. To allow them to express their feelings, the little children were taken to a public square and lined up. Some were dressed in the green uniform of Hamas fighters and were “armed” with toy machine guns that they were encouraged to shoot in the air at Israelis. Then an Israeli flag was placed on the ground in front of them and set ablaze while all the youngsters stamped on it and screamed epithets of hatred toward Israel and Israelis, with the encouragement of their teachers, as passersby in the square watched. This, she said, allowed them to give voice to their feelings so that they would not remain bottled up inside [more]

As parents of a child deliberately murdered by people who hate Israel and everything it and its people stand for, we also had to find a way to give voice to our feelings so that they would not remain bottled up inside.

Of course, we write this blog. And in addition we created Keren Malki, a foundation in our daughter's memory that does concrete things to benefit families who are raising a special-needs child, irrespective of their political outlook or religion. To see what we is been done day after day in our daughter's memory with the help of many friends, please click here. Keep Keren Malki in mind if you are inclined to make an end-of-year charitable gift.

Click for an overview of Keren Malki's work. And please tell your friends.