Israel is not just about borders, human rights, terror, and religion. It is also a place where parents kill their children.
For the past week, the media has highlighted three murders of children of 4 or 5 years old. We have heard a criminologist and a psychologist talking about the danger of copycat killings, where parents frustrated by their child, or some other trouble, turn to murder.
A young Frenchman, learning that the man who fathered him as a result of a casual affair was an Israeli, decided to visit along with his wife Marie and child Rose. It was a mistake to bring Marie. She and Grandpa fell in love. There was a divorce. The father of Rose returned to France with her. The mother remained in Israel to produce two more children with Grandpa Ron. She pursued legal proceedings in France to obtain Rose. The child was a problem. Perhaps she was autistic. Reports are that Grandpa killed her, with some degree of participation by Marie. Ron's mother (Rose's great-grandmother) reported the child missing only a month or more after her disappearance. The police have been looking without results for her body.
Within a week of hearing this story, there were two other cases. In one a mother drowned her four year old boy at the beach, and in another a mother drowned her son of similar age in a bathtub.
Experts admit to a limited capacity to explain the cluster. Among the common traits in the most recent two cases are single mothers, both migrants from the former Soviet Union.
The Ministry of Immigration Absorption is adamant in refusing an explanation that immigrants are prone to violence. They also note the social services provided to immigrants in order to help in their adjustment. Yet reports of violence among youth or in families often come to us with names that are Russian or pictures that are Ethiopian.
Social scientists have known for a long time that the experience of migration adds considerable stress to families. A classic description of the pathologies is William Thomas and Florian Znaniecki, The Polish Peasant in Europe and America (University of Chicago Press, 1918). My own migration was costly for the family, and I came as a tenured professor in the country's premier university. Almost all migrants come without the opportunities that I enjoyed for housing, employment and social contacts, as well as lacking language skills and a knowledge of the society.
Israel has profited immensely from the million or so Russian-speakers and the 40,000 or so Ethiopians who have come since the 1980s, as well as smaller numbers from Latin America, North America, France and the UK. The influence of the Russians is apparent whenever one goes to a concert, a hospital, or a clinic. Ethiopians came from a profoundly different background, but are now entering the officer corps of the military and the universities.
Russians and Ethiopians also appear frequently in the stories of violence and family tragedies.
With all its immigrants, and the extensive presence of pistols and machine guns in a society that considers itself threatened, Israel's incidence of violence is not high by international standards. One tabulation of recent homicides per 100,000 population includes the following examples.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_murder_rate
Venezuela: 65
South Africa: 39
United States: 5.7
Palestine: 4.0
Spain: 3.4
Switzerland: 2.9
Finland: 2.8
Israel: 2.6
Scotland: 2.6
Northern Ireland: 2.5
Canada 1.9
England and Wales: 1.4
Horrible cases have appeared in countries with generally low rates of violence. In the last year media emphasized the Austrian man who kept a daughter hidden as his sex slave for 24 years, and a German cannibal. Palestinians reported a case of two adults, retarded, kept in a cage in the cellar since childhood by a family who was ashamed of them.
Israel has numerous boarding schools, some set up years ago as orphanages for children from the Holocaust or other cases of persecution. Now they serve families who cannot cope with children at home, or children taken from their homes by social service agencies. Some of the youngsters come from overseas, sent by families who think that Israel would be good for them.
In response to the recent killings, professionals have urged family members, neighbors, kindergarten teachers, physicians and others to be alert to signs of trouble. We wonder if all us assigned to the task of big brother will add or detract from the quality of the society.
There have been several days without another report of a child killed in its family. We hope for many more.
Ira Sharkansky (Emeritus)
Department of Political Science
Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Home tel: 972-2-532-2725
Cell phone: 054-683-5325
Fax: 972-2-582-9144
msira@mscc.huji.ac.il