Monthly allocations and compensation for families that have adopted terrorism orphans are now only one step from becoming law.
Welfare Minister Moshe Kachlon has approved the payments to families that have adopted children whose parents were murdered in terrorist attacks. The families will each receive monthly payments for lost work time and other expenses. The payments will stop once the orphan reaches age 18.
Kachlon’s approval means that the end is near for 18 months of debates and delays regarding the payments. Missing now is only approval from the Finance Ministry, which is expected shortly.
A total of 25 husband-and-wife pairs have been murdered by Palestinian terrorists in the past 11 years. The most recent was that of Rabbi Ehud and Ruth Fogel, brutally murdered in their home in Itamar, together with three of their six children, two months ago.
In August of last year, Yitzchak and Tali Imas, parents of six, were murdered in a roadside shooting near their home in Beit Haggai, in southern Judea. Other couples include Rabbi Binyamin and Talia Kahane, Dov and Gavriela Weiss of Givat Ze’ev, three husband-and-wife pairs in a Haifa restaurant attack in 2003, Yaniv and Sharon Bar-Shalom, Gadi and Tzippy Shemesh, Rabbi Yossi and Chana Dickstein, Rachel and David Gavish, and Mordechai and Tzirel Schijveschuurder, together with three of their eight children, in the Sbarro restaurant suicide bombing in in Jerusalem in August 2001.
“The situation of these [adoptive] families is unique,” Minister Kachlon said. “They took upon themselves the heavy and difficult mission of taking care of children who lost their parents in terrorist attacks. We must do everything do help them deal with the daily difficulties with honor. This is our moral obligation towards those who took upon themselves this difficult task.”