Please Buckle Yourself In and Count Your Children

Just when you think you have seen and told it all. Just when you start believing those that tell you they have heard all your stories and its time for something new. You happen across this article in our local paper. Although the English papers have a more lively account. A "ultra-Orthodox" family with their 18 suitcases and four children, left their four year old at Ben Gurion Airport. They boarded their flight to Paris without her, the plane took off and they only realized she was missing once the pilot made an announcement over the PA system. Gotta love it.

Now blackwifeo and I are not the most organized of parents but I am sure we would notice one missing when boarding a flight. We spoke about this last night and could not understand how they could get on the plane and not notice that they had an empty seat where one of their four should have been sitting. After all they have only four children, and as good religious Jews surely they should strive for between eight and twelve offspring. I think this is grounds for having their parenting licenses revoked.

What I find particularly interesting is that there is no mention of this incident in the Jerusalem Post Online. That shining light of truth for the local English speaking community probably did not want to annoy their large orthodox readership. My "pinko, commie, left wing paper" had no trouble bringing us the story. Although you need to read to near the end to find out that the airport cop had "bought the girl some ice cream, by which time she was calm enough to let her know that she only eats food with a Badatz kashrut certificate". Why the cover up? Anyone who has ever flown to or from Israel would not for one second doubt they were ultra orthodox.

I listened in horror to the news this morning as a religious member of parliament tried to pin the blame for this on the airport authorities. While they are not blameless (you have to remove the baggage of a passenger that does not get on the flight), clearly its solely the responsibility of the parents to ensure their children are where they should be. You really should have to pass a test to have children, even though I would probably have to cheat off blackwifeo to pass.