03.02.2012 10.Schwat. 5772
Wohnungslose:
A humanitarian crisis is underway in a park near you. The state must immediately send a rescue mission there, which it knows how to do when it wants to.
On these cold winter nights, people are sleeping in a public park near you. In the heart of Jerusalem, around a dozen families are passing their days and nights in tents in Sacher Park, without heat and cut off from the electricity grid by order of the municipality. On the edge of Tel Aviv, in Levinsky Park, the scene is even more cruel: Dozens of African asylum seekers are sleeping under the open sky, finding shelter among the playground equipment with only a torn woolen blanket to cover them. Last week, one of them was found dead.
The decision on their fate is a political one. Poverty exists in every society, but the state can decide how severe and how deep. Israel has decided that no one will go hungry here, so you'll see no children with swollen bellies. But Israel has decided that homelessness of children (and their parents ) can be tolerated, even though a roof over one's head is a human need no less basic than food. So all that needs to be done is to raise the bar when it comes to poverty that society will tolerate….