With Israel postponing the Dorner commission recommendations of stipends being paid to the first group of Holocaust survivors, Haaretz pounds back, calling on survivors to “react to such an attitude by blocking the entrance to the Yad Vashem Holocaust Museum in order to emphasize that Israel has lost its moral right to speak in their name, and is not permitted to ask the world for special treatment as the country of the Jewish survivors.”

The cabinet decision two days ago to postpone the implementation of the Dorner Commission recommendations - which determined that an additional allowance should be paid immediately to 43,000 Holocaust survivors - causes unforgivable harm to the first group of survivors to arrive in the country immediately after the war: those who paid the highest price with their bodies and their souls, and were forced by the government to give up individual compensation from Germany as part of the reparations agreement.

The waiving of personal compensation from Germany by these survivors was supposed to transfer the burden of caring for them to the state, But surprisingly, this group actually received the worst treatment of all the survivors, while those who didn’t immigrate to Israel received far higher compensation.

The Dorner Commission deliberately reduced the sum of compensation to a minimum so that it could be paid out immediately, although the cumulative monetary loss for each survivor is between NIS 1.3 million and NIS 2.2 million. The decision to postpone this NIS 800 per month payment as well, and to renew discussion of the subject only in 2009, when the average age of those in question is now 84, means that thousands of those entitled to an additional allowance will not receive it.
According to the data of the Prime Minister’s Office, 87 percent of the poorest elderly living in Israel are Holocaust survivors. A law initiated by the government was passed in April to pay a monthly stipend of NIS 1,000 to elderly survivors of the camps and ghettoes who immigrated to Israel after 1953. This stipend, which will certainly help many people, primarily immigrants from the former Soviet Union, does not apply to the 43,000 survivors who immigrated to Israel before 1953 and who were the subject of the Dorner Commission discussions. These survivors have fallen between all the cracks. They were discriminated against from the start compared with other survivors, and the discriminatory treatment continues.

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No holding back there! So, what do you think?