I brought him to the U.S. to give him back his life. |
For over nine years, my wife and I suffered a slow, debilitating fate as we tried to raise a child with Asperger's Syndrome with almost no guidance and absolutely no support from our environment. Part of the problem was the arrogantly indifferent attitude that characterizes Israeli society; "He's your son, so take care of him," was what we heard time and time again. It went without saying that if we said that we did not know what to do for him -- and we didn't -- that we were incompetent parents and should have our child taken away from us. That is exactly what the Israeli authorities tried to do to us numerous times. Even when we finally established that we had not caused our son's problem -- and doing so cost us a princely sum and years of our lives -- we were still left to our own devices and were expected to develop and fund whatever support network we could provide for our son. In 1998, we admitted defeat and took our son to the United States, where, in a short period of time, he is making amazing progress in a regular elementary school. The difference seems to be, more than anything else, good will, something that seems to be totally foreign to the Israeli character.
Am I being unfair? Let's put it this way: I moved to Israel in 1975. My children, all five of them, were born in Israel. My son was born with a disability, but the authorities refused for most of the nine years of his life that he lived there to acknowledge his disability. They tried to blame his parents for having caused the problem. They tried all sorts of cruel "treatments" that worsened his situation. They even placed him in a "special needs" after-school program where the woman who ran the program locked him in a storage room every day without food or drink, and she then had the nerve to demand that we pay for painting the wall when my son drew on it during one of the days when he was locked away! When we complained to our social worker about this abusive treatment, she replied, "So what? I do the same to my own children!" No, I seriously doubt that I am being unfair, given this history of events.
Am I bitter? Well, what do you think? Would you agree to this sort of treatment? Would you be so forgiving? Don't try to make me feel guilty for saying that the Emperor is naked. I only say what I saw, and what I saw sucks. That I say without apologies; you can't make me like child abuse, no matter how you try to justify it or hide it behind banners of Zionism. That's exactly what was done to us, and I'm not so willing to forgive. I'm certainly not willing to forget.
Just for the record, my son is a brilliant child and strikingly attractive. In his new environment, he has already charmed many people. He has demonstrated that he can control many of the problems we once thought beyond his control. He has had good days and bad days, like most of us, but never has any babysitter here ever state that he/she would never stay with my son again because he was beyond control, whereas in Israel, I had to keep a PowerPoint ad for a babysitter on my computer because we could not retain anybody to stay with him over an extended period of time, save for one team of sisters whom we renamed the Pig-out Sisters: this team would eat everything not locked away out of sight when they stayed with my son. We were not in a position to argue; at least they lasted for more than a month, which was better than most. Many lasted one or two times and then refused to return, no matter what the amount we paid.
What strikes me as odd is the fact that in the U.S., in the seven months I have lived here, all the persons who have worked with my son seem to be completely charmed by him. In fact, his resource teacher, on the day that his Individual Education Program was drawn up, told me and my wife in confidence that she had "fallen in love with my son." Suddenly I hear only positive feelings expressed about the same child who was the terror of all the babysitters in Ra'anana. When I was here with him in the beginning, many persons stayed with my son free of charge and were willing to do it again; today, his care is funded through the state, but it's obvious to me that clearly money is not the motivating factor. The persons in Israel included high-school students up to adults, some of whom have experience with children with disorders, and even they refused to stay with him, even though we paid them handsomely for the service. We were driven hopelessly into debt as we tried to give our son a life; in the United States, he found it when there were no funds to give. How do we explain that difference? How does anyone? If money isn't the motivating factor, then how does Israel explain the fact that it refused to provide for a child born and raised there?
It was my good fortune that I am an American citizen and, therefore, my son is also. However, for years, I could not bring my son to receive proper care because I was held against my will by a stop order requested by a vindictive ex-spouse. She is, incidentally, a special education teacher by profession! It does not increase my faith in special education in Israel to know that such cruelty is common among the educators who are supposed to have the interests of children with disabilities at heart.
I'm sure plenty of nasty individuals will attack me for daring to tell the truth as it applied to my son. Let them attack; at least now my son has a future. That's all I wanted for him, and Israel couldn't give him that. The big question should be: if Israel cannot give a future to the children born there, what kind of future can there be for Israel? I don't even want to speculate on that one; I'm just glad that my son's not there any more, and I know that he'll not return of his own free will. If Israeli nationalist zealots choose to take the law into their own hands to cover up this story, that is quite another matter -- and it could easily happen.
Before anybody else flames me for using my son as an excuse to seek my fortune in the United States, let me inform you that in the time I have been in the United States, the need to be there for my son has already cost me the very prestigious job I held at MCI Telecommunications. As is the case with American companies, I was given absolutely no prior warning that I would be dismissed because of the need to deal with a child with special needs. It definitely hurt me when it happened, and not just in the pocket; I felt that it was a rejection of my son more than of me, and I did not want him to feel that again he was being rejected. If you agree with me that nobody should lose a job because of the need to be parents to special needs children, then it's MCI you should be flaming, not me.
Clearly I did not return to the United States to strike it rich. However, I did come to help my son, who would have had no future in the country in which he was born. Although I've had a rough time of it, the efforts have paid off: now he receives over $5000 monthly in support services from the state. In Israel, we couldn't even find volunteers to be with him in the afternoon so that he would not be lonely.
To be fair, one couple in Israel stands out as perhaps the only ones who really did reach out to my child. I am speaking of the young man who we employed as his inclusion facilitator and his fiancée. They have remained in touch with us, call us frequently overseas, and are the only persons who show that not all the persons in Israel are heartless. The problem is that the heartless ones seem to be the vocal ones and the ones wielding the power!
Don't force me to sound like Vanessa Redgrave at the Oscars when I don't want to sound like her; it's just that as a father, I cannot be so forgiving when my son had to experience such widespread rejection as he experienced in Israel. Even though American society is often accused of being very two-faced, he has already made some friends in the U.S. That alone reassures me more than I can possibly say.
Maybe you think I'm crazy, and maybe you're right. When I think of how my son has suffered in the past, I cry. I can't hold back the tears. I'm particularly sensitive when I think of how he's been rejected over and over. What gives me the strength to carry on is knowing that now he has a chance in life.
Just for the record, he's made a trememdous improvement and is now in college. The experts say that his prognosis is excellent, and he'll live as normal a life as the world will allow him. I feel I did the right thing for him.