Thank You Dudi Zilbershlag for finally sharing with the rest of the world the truth. The Charedi are the most persecuted group in Israel ! If only the world knew but sadly we dont have a voice...

1. "How it should have been handled": It was "handled" correctly. The woman perpetrated a crime. Wheteher she is 'ill' or not is a modifying factor in sentencing. She does not meet any equivalent of the McNaughton Rule. 2. Her husband is guilty as well. He omitted his responsibility as a parent equally responsible for the child's welfare. All the children should be removed to foster homes immediately. 3. A crime was perpertrated against the child. You are more worried about the Haredis. They'll survive. The child was a different matter. 4. The riots? They should have been crushed and the perpetrators jailed. 5. Your bleeding heart crap leaves me sick to my stomach. "A touching conversation"? Better a billy club and civil conduct by the fanatics.

and would not have had a clue as to the mother's diagnosis nor ability or expertise in how to treat or help the child. They are NOT doctors.

I have to confess that I didn't look at it from this angle. I was so disgusted with the rioters (and especially the secular use of the word hareidim to describe them) that I overlooked the main focus of the argument. Still - the author should have condemned the rioters - two wrongs don't make a right.

yes i claim there is no anti-haredi persecution in israel. i claim there is persecution by haredis against the secular majority in israel. io claim the haredi try to tell others what to do, what to eat, how to live and what to think. the haredi in israel do not cooperate with the eklected government, they say religious law is above the law of the land, the "mother" does not even recognize the state of israel. these parasites, who do not serve in the army, whose factions meet with the madman of teheran and with hamas in gaza, who incite against the jewish state deserve no pity, only contmpt. your effort to defend these haters of israel and lovers of hamas is also worthy of nothing but contempt!!!

Whatt gives you the right to live off the state? What gives you the right to use hard earned tax money to act like a sloth and force your wive to work while you don't even have the balls to fight and die for the nation. Shame on the Haredim. Self-righteous nothingness! The woman committed a crime and will be punished just like anyother member of society. The day will come when the Haredim will work a day job and serve their country like every other good citizen. Shame on the entire Haredi population in Israel!!!

There is absolutely no excuse for the violence that has erupted over this matter, which funnily this article fails to even mention. Religion should express peace, love and tolerance, but as this country proves time and time again, it does anything but. This is a tragic story that has been exploited for the expression of hate and anger. You're damn right there is persecution and as long as the Haredi continue to behave like a neanterthol mob, so there should be. And how dare you try to justify their behaviour! Yes a sad sad story, that people like you are using an excuse to burn cars and spill blood.

of the abusers rabbinic connections. But too many heredi (as in the case of the yeshiva student who ran over an Ethiopian woman) believe they are beyond and above the law - moral and civic. A secular parent would STILL be sitting in jail. Or in time (not 2 days) a psychiatric hospital, not house arrest.

Reguler antisemitisim 2009

are all huge problems in the Heredi envirnonment. The fear of this becoming general knowledge is Dudi Zilbershlag's biggest fear.

to defend her. you should be more worried about that poor boy, this is not special treatment for the heredim. all perpetrators of child abuse, no matter their religious beliefs, must be treated as the crimianls they are. all child abusers are "sick". they have to be, to do what they do. so what. they are sick criminals.

was there any "abuse" in the first place, and if this isn't just a poor woman being persecuted for her beliefs. Since the child has been in a hospital for 7 MONTHS and the hospital wasn't able to change the child's health status - why is the mother being blamed? A lot of Harradim DO serve in the Army, and a lot DO work. And Eda Harradi takes NOTHING from the government. So just how are they parasites???

He does not condone the actions of this woman. He condemns the paroxy created by the governent involved, the hospital and the media.

The way prosecutors work even in the USA many times when they try everything possible to have a case, sometimes saying elleging scenarios that could have been true but are so far from reality or having 100% proof, is the problem. From the Torah point of view there is no such a thing as alleging to more than it could had happen according the the proof in hand he has. That is why the mindset of a person that learns Torah, the right and compasionate way how to see a situation is as the author said. lets see are you afraid of her doing the same to the other children, the answer would be no so the outcome is send her home,are you afraid that if the child is not separated from the mother could be hurt again, so that doubt is enough to remove him from her care until all the information is put together, but treating her like a criminal even if it is right according to secular law that is based on the turkish and english law. Israel is a country where we didn't see a ortyhodox person being part of the supreme court ever, no wonder there is no sensitivity to the way the Toorah would rule in a given situation, that is not proper in a Jewish state, perhaps that is the hidden culprit in what it is happening. riots are digusting, but shouldn't a prosecutor in a Jewish state act more Jewishly?

In US the mother, if the report is accurate, would be charged with a crime. She probably would receive therapy.Tthe fact remains, ill as the mother may be, she seemingly abuse,. endangered her child. Removing a dangerouly sick care taker from her child is no reason for others to fear medical treatment as you suggest.

It is obvious to me as a trained physician that this woman tried to harm her child. The courts seem to have tremendous compassion for these people because they burn garbage in the streets. What about all the children who sat in prison for their love of Eretz Yisrael.? Where is the compassion due to the heroes whose lives were destroyed in Gush Katif? Maybe their mistake was not burning the garbage cans.

Abusing her children IS 'firing a machine gun in all directions'! Stop excusing animal behavior. If an Arab did it, you'd say look at those savages. If a haredi does it, you say have mercy, she's sick. If you are going to raise the bar on behavioral standards, u need to apply it to EVERYONE, including and especially Torah observant Jews, of all stripes, Doing any less is ultimate hypocrisy!

The author described Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy (MSbP) as "an obsessive desire to help someone under one’s care to the point of jeopardizing him, so that both the caretaker and person under care receive attention." That is incorrect. MSbP doesn't result from a desire to help people, but rather to gain attention by taking on the role as valiant hero/victim to achieve emotional satisfaction at the expense of others. It is not motivated by positive feelings of trying to help others. It's motivated by trying to aggrandize one's self at whatever cost. It's not at all benevolent. The perpetrator does not confine herself (90% of all perpetrators are mothers) to just one victim. Indeed, when one child is unavailable, the mother is very likely to move on to another. That's why it's imperative to separate a mother from all her children. MSbP is a deadly form of abuse. It involves deliberate infliction of harm over an extended period of time over numerous victims. Perhaps if more in the Haredi community understood just what they are up against, they would be more cooperative in protecting children from this threat.

The haredim are first class experts in distorting reality...it is known as "pilpul".

The author is a PR flak for the Haredi community, and should identify himself as such. This piece is total propaganda, and like most in the haredi community itself, divorced from reality.

This reporter has used every dirty twisted calculations to hide the truth. The moteher is guilty of starving her son and when the hospital attempted to feed him intraveiously she was caught disconnecting the apperatus.DEFINITELY NOT THE ACTIONS OF THE INNOCENT And now this reporter claiming his sick lies. Does the reporte33r want the child dead before he admits his lies????

It really is a shame that a man lives his whole life off the work of others - no job, no military service - and then feels so entitled, so self-righteous, that he can justify burning trash in the street and assaulting local law enforcement. How dare you people? How dare you hijack the Torah, and desecrate God's name publicly? Who are you? What gives you the right? You have no right to anything, because you do nothing. Learning Torah? If this is what learning Torah brings you - poverty, body odor, disdain for the entire world except your own, violence, hatred, etc., etc., etc., then I want out. You have effectively disgusted the vast majority of the Jewish people, and anyone who defends you is full of absolute crap.

Why don’t you focus on the bigger picture here? What about the little boy who resembled a Holocaust victim? What about him? Who is going to protect and look out for him? Where are HIS rights? It's not without just cause and reason that there are such attacks and such hated directed towards the Haredim. They are supposed to fear God and respect his laws, this makes their vile and sick behaviour even more appalling. What would you have the Israeli population do? Sit back and watch them burn up and destroy Jerusalem over a parking lot? Blow up a hospital and a doctor because he was involved in a child abuse case (he’s a doctor!!!!!!)? Or should we applaud their vile despicable behaviour for forming modesty squads and severely beat up women? The list simply goes on and on and on. You need a shrink man – or at the very least some glasses and a hearing aid. You clearly have NO idea what is going on in this country day to day with the Haredim – if you did, you wouldn’t be writing such debris.

My father is a community leader in California and unfortunately has to deal with these kind of cases in the community. when I spoke to him about this he couldn't understand why she was being treated as a common criminal instead of dealing with her issue? it doesn't mean that the protests (which btw mainstream media made it much worse that it really was) were the proper response but if it was mine or your family member being the scapegoat of discrimination I can't say I would be any better....... CAN YOU?

You completely missed the point: A child was abused to the point of death by his mother. Those suffering from Munchhousen by Proxy syndrome are sick, but they do know very well that what they're doing is wrong. That's what makes their actions a crime. That's why this woman needs to be punished. Not because she's Haredi, but because she's a child abuser, nearly child murderer. And we can thank G-d as well as alert hospital staff for the fact that her son is on the road to recovery, instead of being buried. SHAME ON YOU!

http://www.meirpanim.org/page_e.php?name=David_Zilbershlag,_founder

Seriously now !!!!!!

BUT, he is still wrong in this case !

The point you made about the little boy's having been hospitalized for months and yet the mother is to blame is a good one, but I think a little misguided. The child had been starved prior to being taken to the hospital. He wasn't striving in the hospital, then his mother was caught on camera removing his feeding tubes, that's when hospital staff understood his lack of recovery and weight gain. As for your comment "Eda Harradi takes NOTHING from the government", where did THAT come from? They take bituah leumi, which until a few years ago amounted to thousands of shekels a month for large families. That and the fact that they don't serve in the army and don't work for a living and pay taxes, is the reason they are parasites. True, a lot of the women do work, but it's usually for other haredim such as Harredi schools, gamin, organizations, etc, and they get paid under the table, this means most haredi employed women don't pay income tax. In addition, because the haredi men don't work, and it's hard to prove when the women work as they are paid under the table, they enjoy discounts from facilities and municipal tax and it's us the tax payers who pay for them. Let’s not forget that haredim don't go to the army. Sure there are some who do, but the overwhelming majority don't, and all Israelis know this. The haredim really ARE parasites. Shane, your name indicates you're American and your extremely naïve and misguided post betray the fact that you do not, nor have ever lived in Israel. MIND YOUR OWN BUSINESS!

I agree with you 100%. My feeling exactly. The write is definitely a Haredi. Why would he not condemn the riots? Why protect the bullies and criminals?