Manhigut Yehudit..
8 Tevet, 5774/11 December '13..
Translated from the Makor Rishon newspaper
“Thank you,” an anonymous friend wrote me on Facebook. “Today I received another notification, for the umpteenth time, that I must once again receive chemotherapy. I have no more strength and I really needed your speech.”
Since I posted my Knesset speech on choosing life over assisted suicide, I have received many similar responses.
Tuesday night was an “all-nighter” at the Knesset. Deliberations on the Infiltrators Law wore on well past midnight. So my wife, Tzippy, watched the popular television show “Uvdah” by herself. Wednesday morning, Tzippy called me, extremely upset. “How could it be that Channel 2 presents a Parkinson’s patient who chose to end his life as a hero, a victor?”
It’s been over ten years since Parkinson’s moved into our home. Tzippy’s first symptoms appeared when she was in her mid-thirties. For years, we ran from doctor to doctor, unsuccessfully trying to figure out what was wrong. Parkinson’s? Who even considers Parkinson’s at such a young age?
I don’t know anybody more heroic than my wife. For her, every day is a battle for life and its meaning. It is very difficult for her to walk – but she runs to cook for lone soldiers in Ra’anana, to arrange for neighbors to visit with the local ill who have no one to look after them, lends an empathetic ear to whoever needs to unload an emotional burden and fills her days with endless acts of kindness. She and tens of thousands of others who suffer debilitating disease fight for their lives – and the meaning in their lives – from morning to night, 24/7, all year around. There are no vacations from this cursed disease and others like it.
Along comes Ilana Dayan on Channel 2 and dedicates an entire episode to Mati Milo, z”l, the person who decided to surrender to Parkinson’s and end his life in the only place in the world that has legalized mercy killing – Switzerland. In other words, the rest of the world also understands that humanity cannot officially sanction suicide.
I cannot judge Mati Milo, z”l. Our Sages tell us never to judge a person until we are in his shoes. I do not judge him and I certainly do not wish his circumstances on anybody. I will not interfere in any person’s ethical dilemmas. The problem is not Mati Milo and his decision. The problem is the glorification that Channel 2 lent to his act of desperation.
“Do you not understand that you are encouraging more ill people to commit suicide?” I asked in the Knesset. “Is there no limit to lowly populism? To the drive for rating at any price?”
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