Baby Adele with her mom, Daniela Vaknin
A few months ago, I reported here on the case of Baby Adele, the Palestinian infant who was essentially stolen by the Israeli welfare ministry from her biological mother and father. To recap the sad tale, Daniela Vaknin, who was raised in a troubled Jewish home, married a Palestinian man. Together they had a baby they named Adele.
But they had a problem. Or I should say they were a problem. Israel officially disapproves of miscegenation. The idea of a Jewish woman marrying an Arab is a social phenomenon that Israeli racialists like Bentzi Gopstein and his terror group, Lehava, rail against.
Social welfare officials pressured Daniela to give her baby up for adoption. They figured they could find a nice Jewish home to raise the child, where she would make the Jewish religion proud. Social workers removed Adele from Daniela’s care.
She has essentially been fighting for years to regain custody, with the government mounting an insurmountable campaign against her. In such situations, where officials have taken a child away from biological parents, there is virtually nothing they can do. They have little or no rights to fight back. The State maintains absolute power. It knows best.
The welfare ministry awarded Adele to an ultra-Orthodox couple as foster parents, with the intent of moving to adoption as soon as possible. But there was a minor fly in the ointment. The foster couple divorced. Then officials had a quandary: you cannot award a child to a single parent. But they fixed that quick by finding a new woman for him to marry. Now the new couple has resumed the adoption process and it is close to finalized.
But Daniela still believes she has a chance to redeem Adele from the social welfare system. Before she gave birth, she went before a Sharia court (an officially-recognized Israeli State body) and attested to judges that she had converted to Islam. As far as Israeli law is concerned, after their approval she was officially recognized as Muslim.
But Israeli bureaucrats had a different idea. Those who convert must submit their conversion legal document to a clerk at the Justice ministry for proper recording. But in this case, the clerk didn’t do so. For some reason, he refused. Several years went by and when Daniela inquired, the official said that he couldn’t record it because she had used, as one part of her full name, a name that wasn’t recorded on her conversion document.
There is no provision for the Justice ministry to deny a conversion. That is the job, in the case of Israeli Muslims, of the Sharia court. There is also no provision to delay a conversion due to such a supposed error on the registrant’s part. In fact, Daniela is Muslim whether the ministry says do or not. No clerk can deny her what Israeli law guarantees her.
But when a bureaucracy wants to reach a desired outcome, rules, regulations, and rights fly out the window.
The reason the question of Daniela’s conversion is critical to the case is that the State of Israel may not place a child for adoption with Jewish parents if the child is Muslim. Until now, the State could argue that the biological mother was Jewish, therefore the adoption is legal. If Daniela is Muslim, it is no longer viable.
So Daniela would like (via her attorney) to question the Justice ministry official about his actions. The Welfare ministry has objected. You have to wonder why. Was there collusion between the two ministries to invalidate her conversion (something they don’t have the power to do anyway)? Now, Israeli courts will decide the matter.
Vaknin’s hopes to block the adoption on these grounds. The hearing on whether Daniela’s attorney may question the recalcitrant clerk will be next month.
The State wants to steal Daniela’s baby. It has already destroyed her marriage with her Palestinian husband (who has since remarried), though he remains committed to helping Daniela regain their child. Now it wishes to complete the task by offering a Palestinian child to an ultra-Orthodox couple. This is a profound insult to Israeli Muslims. It is a profound violation of religious rights and liberties. It is a glaring example of a Jewish supremacist state running roughshod over its non-Jewish citizens. This is a busha v’cherpa.
I wish Daniela well. She is a brave woman facing a massive institutional juggernaut. I hope she frees Adele from the maw of the Israeli nanny-state.
Silverstein has published Tikun Olam since 2003, It exposes the secrets of the Israeli national security state. He lives in Seattle, but his heart is in the east. He publishes regularly at Middle East Eye and Jacobin Magazine. His work has also appeared in Al Jazeera English, The Nation, Truthout and other outlets.
@Richard
“The State wants to steal Daniela’s baby.”
How old is Adele? I don’t think she’s a baby any longer.
Wait. What?! The state took away a baby from a legitimately married couple? How did they justify that? Surely there is no legal basis for doing that unless there were allegations of abuse or neglect!
I think Richard meant to write Baby Adele™.
Sounds s lot better!
It is a horror story. But it seems that does not register with you and Abby/Barbar.
Adele will be eight years old next month. The same age as my daughter.
Elisabeth – the story is sad on its own without the need for fake statement like ‘Baby Adele’.
Another example for this fake language is “Palestinian infant/child” while Adele is as much of an Israeli as she is Palestinian and Daniela went back to live within the Jewish community.
But I guess sticking to the facts will make this just another sad story about a kid removed from the parents home which happens in many countries on a regular basis.
“which happens in many countries on a regular basis.”
That is simply not true. Read the post, will you.
Stealing children because you don’t like their parents is such a medieval practice it beggars belief. And notice how when states do it the child is sent to a “model home”, and in this case it’s an ultra-Orthodox one. No science ed, no real humanities, no sex ed, just living in a mental shtetl the rest of her life. And she will probably be picked on for her Palestinian father to boot.
It’s great to live in a country where you can convert from one religion to another without submitting a form to the government.
The principle of child adoption n Israel is faulted. The system relies mainly on the American system – in which, the social worker is considered a sole specialist who may decide the fate of a child unpopularly – as depicted in your post.
The saddest in this situation (in my view) is that there is 0 or near that of specialists, academics or public servants who would denounce these methods, and suggest something better.
The only member of the Knesset who I may think about was the late Dr. Marina Solodkin. A former FSU repatriant, from a marginal party, addressing a marginal issue (in the mainstream thinking)…it was easy enough for the establishment to ignore her. It is important to understand that she was openly speaking out against the establishment. An uncommon practice in Israeli politics.
Adoption practices in Israel to this day remain very nasty business, which many choose to look over.
There are few other topics which to this day are considered “nasty practices”, few good examples would be suicide rates in the population, treatment of mental disorder patients and unlawful acts committed by the establishment in it’s daily routines.
Historically speaking, adoption remains a fascistic practice targeting those considered marginalized for race, class, or sectarian reasons. Let’s not forget that 4500 Yemeni children were stolen from their families during the airlifting of Yemeni Jews. So this is not the exception, and it should not surprise us.
This is very similar to what the Inquisition did with Jewish children in Portugal. They stole them from their parents and sent them to Sao Tome in the Atlantic Ocean. Except that these children were not made available for adoption.