Monday, April 20, 2009

Is Israel too dangerous for children?

Answer: Israel is the safest place for children in the world. Israel is the best place for children to live in. The above title is because of the excuse given by an American judge for not returning some Jewish children back home to Israel.

Robert Silverman wants his young sons returned to Israel. But in a decision with major repercussions for international child-abduction cases, a federal judge rules for his ex-wife, saying the country is unsafe for kids.

http://dir.salon.com/story/mwt/feature/2003/01/07/custody/index.html

By David Tuller

The following story shows that the USA also plays by the same dirty rules that Brazil: When he came to Massachusetts a few months ago to see the boys, she had him jailed for non-payment of child support. The full story follows:

Jan 7, 2003 Since the start of the Al-Aqsa Intifada in September 2000, Israel has become a much more dangerous place. More than 350 people have been killed within Israel proper since the surge of suicide bombings started. That figure includes the victims of Sunday's attack in downtown Tel Aviv, when at least 23 died. Hundreds of Israelis and Palestinians have also died in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. But does the unrelenting violence mean that Israel is too dangerous a place to raise children?

It's not a merely theoretical question. In at least one American court case involving divorced parents -- one in Israel, the other in the United States -- who are fighting over custody of their children, a federal judge has determined that Israel is at war, and therefore not a safe place for children. The ruling was issued in a case being adjudicated under the Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction, a 1980 treaty accepted by more than 70 countries as the legitimate basis for resolving incidents in which a parent engaged in a custody battle with an estranged or former spouse abducts a child to another country.

But that decision, and some little-noticed rulings in other countries, have sparked hot debate, and some real anxiety, among international-custody lawyers and their clients. They worry that the determination that Israel is "at war" could be used, in future cases involving charges of international abduction, to justify preventing children from returning not only to Israel but to other countries as well.

"Everyone wants children to be safe," says Richard Crouch, an Arlington, Va., lawyer specializing in child-custody cases. "But the more we fool around with the convention here and refuse to return kids for our own reasons, the more difficult it will be to get cooperation from other countries when we want kids returned."

The case that led to the judge's ruling that Israel is a war zone -- the first such determination by a U.S. court -- involves Robert Silverman and his former wife, Julie Schuster. The pair met in 1988 at a hotel restaurant in Jerusalem, where he was working as a cook and she as an assistant manager. She was born in the U.S., he in South Africa. In 1989, they left together for the United States and married. They lived in Poughkeepsie, N.Y., where he attended the Culinary Institute of America, and later spent time in San Francisco and Los Angeles before settling down in Plymouth, Minn. Samual, their first son, was born in 1992; his brother, Jacob, arrived three years later. In 1999, Robert and Julie sold their house and moved back to Israel -- and that's where their accounts of the marriage appear to diverge.

Robert says they both intended the move to be permanent. Julie says she held grave misgivings about her marriage and agreed to emigrate as a last-ditch effort to keep the family together -- but realized immediately it was a terrible mistake. The following summer, she took the two boys back to the United States for a vacation. Only then did she inform Robert, who remained in Israel, that she had no intention of returning. The U.S., she said, would be the boys' permanent home.

Robert, who lives in Ra'anana, a small city north of Tel Aviv, says he was devastated by Julie's announcement. He says he simply wants his two sons back with him. "No matter what she's said to them or done," he says, "she can't break the bond we have."

But Julie says that she has no intention of letting them leave the United States again. "I'm very tired; I'm very weary," she says. "It was never my intent to take the children away from Robert. My intent was simply to get a divorce, to not be married to him any longer."

The two-year custody battle has been bitter, with charges and countercharges of domestic violence, emotional cruelty and infidelity. While she was still in Israel, he obtained a temporary court order forbidding her to leave the country. When he came to Massachusetts a few months ago to see the boys, she had him jailed for non-payment of child support. She says he repeatedly threatened her verbally and physically. He says she has tried to poison his relationship with the children.

The two have pursued their conflicting claims through a chain of American and Israeli courts. Finally, last May, a federal district court judge in Minnesota issued the pivotal decision -- one that could affect many more families than the Silvermans. Ignoring official Israeli determinations that Robert Silverman enjoyed legitimate custody rights in Israel, Judge John Tunheim agreed with Julie's argument that the United States was the boys' primary residence, and he ruled that the children should stay with her.

But he included, almost as an afterthought, an explosive finding. Even if he believed that Israel was the boys' home, Tunheim wrote, he wouldn't send them back because the country is now, for all intents and purposes, a "zone of war"-- and returning the children would expose them to serious danger.

Next Page: It's hard to imagine a worse parental nightmare than the abduction of a child to another country

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