According to the Israeli central bureau of statistics there are about 100 thousand illegal foreign workers in Israel. Most of them are from Romania, Thailand, China and the Philippines.

There is only one formal clinic for illegal workers in Israel and it is located in Tel Aviv. Physicians For Human Rights (PHR) used to run it and three months ago they announced that the clinic will be closed. The reason was to put pressure on the Israeli Medical Association (IMA) in order for them to open another clinic of their own.

This week, PHR-Israel declared that their clinic will be reopened next week after the IMA agreed to open another clinic.

It’s a story that not many people in Israel are aware about but in my view it’s one of the most important stories of the week (considering there was a suicide act yesterday).

People are entitled to receive medical treatment regardless of their legal status and I believe that the government should assist. Even though these people are illegal inhabitants, they are in need. They left their country to earn a living and support their families (whom they haven’t seen for quite some time in most of the cases).

The people working in the PHR are these days Righteous among the Nations. The Israeli government should do as much as it can to help in this situation. About 60 years ago most of the Israeli’s parents and grandparents were refugees as well. We shouldn’t forget it.

Image Credit: Allthingsbeautiful

The Prime Minister, Ehud Olmert, said that anyone who will do so, will be fired. In that case, there will no coalition and the government couldn’t longer exist.
Early in the morning they managed to work something out so that they all could keep their jobs. The leading party in the government, KADIMA, will hold primaries and in exchange the Labour ministers will not object in today’s vote.

Aren’t we all happy?

I guess no. The reason from the first place that Barak and his friends wanted to vote against was the last corruption story involving Prime Minister Olmert. Without too many details I’ll just mention that according to the press, he got money (in envelopes) from an American Jewish guy, Morris Talanski. In exchange he gave nothing basically. We don’t know all the facts but it seems that Olmert didn’t tell anyone about this money and perhaps even took it to his private possession.

Politics is amazing. Ronald Reagan once told that the best people aren’t in the government since if they were, the private sector would take them. I guess that this is what we have here. The second best people are doing the job (if not the third or the forth).