Rabbi Yaakov (Kobi) Yakir of the "The State and Torah" program, which works together with MK Bezalel Smotrich (Jewish Home) to fight the legislative attempts to harm the family unit, said it was "inappropriate" for the Justice Ministry to continue advancing a law which will harm parents' status as their children's legal guardians.
Rabbi Yakir mentioned that the attempts to pass the "Parents and their Children" law two years ago were blocked, but the current amendments to the law present the same issues: the current version replaces the word "guardianship" with "parental responsibility."
The previous bill proposed to strike out items 14 and 15 in Israel’s Legal Capacity and Guardianship Law (1962), which define a child’s parents as his or her legal guardians, and which place them in charge of deciding where the child will live, and of representing the child before the authorities.
"The term 'parental responsibility' is not a legal term," Rabbi Yakir explained. "It basically says that the child has his own independent legal rights, and the parents are supposed to implement those rights. Legally, according to the explanations we will receive from the Supreme Court and various organizations, this will allow the child to sue his parents for anything related to how the family manages things."
"For example, if the parents want to move, but the child does not, they will have to reach an agreement. If they cannot reach an agreement, their disagreement may end up in court.
The Parents and Their Children Law bases itself mostly on the conclusions of a committee headed by an extreme leftist, former judge Savyona Rotlevy. Rabbi Yakir, however, brought the committee's minority opinion and that of former judge Aharon Melamed, who served as chief of Israel's juvenile courts. Melamed said that 'replacing 'parental guardianship' with 'parental responsibility' (i.e., state guardianship - ed.) harms the child's right to supervision, guidance, education, and boundaries' and even 'deepens the deprivation, disregard, and abandon these cause in the teens' behavior, and undermines the status of the family unit, which is at a worrisome low today.'"
The writer, a father of two, heads the Familism Movement.