Question

Hi Michi,
A] I read your recent blogs with great interest, and I noticed that you gave me an opening to raise an issue that in any case I was going to bring up with you: the issue of paternalism.
A few days ago my daughter-in-law Hodiya told me about sterilization that was carried out on Ethiopian immigrants when they arrived in the country, and she expressed shock at the paternalism practiced toward them. We know what is good for them and what is not.
To tell the truth, when she told me this I made shocked faces [a commandment performed by rote…], but afterward I asked myself why the shock was not genuine, and I arrived at the following insight: most Ethiopian immigrants lacked adequate education, and therefore the Israeli establishment was aware of the expected difficulties in absorption. In order to minimize future damage, whoever made the decision decided to inject pregnancy-preventing substances.
Given the constraints of time and place, I do not know whether there was a way to carry out this action in cooperation with the women who were treated this way.
There is no doubt that the proper way is to do this in cooperation with the women who were supposed to be treated—but is it always possible to implement such cooperation?
In short: just as we reject the use of violence, but sometimes there is no choice and then we too resort to it, so too with paternalism; and I assume that whoever needs to knows that lip service condemning paternalism must be paid, but sometimes…

All the best