Father's Rights Activists Confront Child Custody Discrimination With Videos

The image may be blury,
but the message is clear.

By Joel Leyden
Israel News Agency

Jerusalem ---- May 6...... It was 2:30 at night and sleep was rapidly becoming nothing more than an abstract thought. My young child was sound asleep just feet away. And perhaps because of that fact, the pain swelled even deeper.

I am a divorced dad. It was never my intention to be divorced. For I knew that divorce is the worst poison that loving, caring and responsible parents could ever give to their children. If parents have issues, it is their responsibility through being married, through the holy wedding vows that we take to provide our children with nothing less than a stable foundation and a loving home. But even for me, after having sent my ex dozens of emails detailing the destructive and adverse effects of divorce, her only response was to charge me with a false and emotionally abusive police complaint of sexual harassment.

You heard right.
In the state of Israel a married women who has been advised by a rather unethical and greedy attorney to place her husband on the defensive by creating Disneyland charges of sexual harassment or violence which would result in the husband and the father of her children being thrown out of his home without even a court hearing.

I was convinced by my attorney to give my ex a divorce to reduce the conflict for my children.
"Give her a get," she told me. "It's the best course for you and your family." A get is the authorization required by the husband to a Jewish court to divorce his wife. If the husband does not provide this "get" the woman becomes what is known as an "Aguna" - a woman who stays married against her will.

If granting a divorce to my ex was the utopian key to reducing conflict for my children, then by all means I was more than ready. But before giving up on maintaining and fighting for a healthy, nuclear family I was made aware of something called Shalom Biet - or peace in the home.

Shalom Biet is one of the oldest and most established principles of Judaism. Religious Jews compare the peace and tranquility of the home to the holiness of the first Temple in Israel. One pays the Rabbinate or Jewish court a fee for establishing Shalom Biet. The disputing parties are then required to go for marriage counseling and work out their differences.

In my case, as in the cases of thousands of other divorced dads living in Israel the marriage counseling never materialized. The Jewish court makes thousands of dollars in Israel by actually stealing this money for Shalom Biet and then closing their doors. Once I realized that Shalom Biet was nothing more or less than a fraud, a racket used by the Jewish court in Israel, I gave my ex a "get."

Today, I should be more disappointed with my attorney at the time than my ex who ran to the family court shortly after I gave her a divorce and transformed me into a "visitor" to my children. My attorney should have advised me to give her a divorce in return for joint custody. I never heard this advice - only "give her a divorce."

In Israel, tens of thousands of loving and responsible divorced fathers have been made into "visitors."
In this land of milk, honey and gender bias discrimination, only if the divorcing couple both agree on joint custody before their divorce will they receive it. According to Israel law it is very rare for joint custody, equal access and or shared parenting to be established if this agreement is not implemented by the couple.

How many divorcing couples agree about anything as they separate?

So by default, in the majority of cases in Israel children lose their fathers due to narcissistic mothers and family courts which still abide by an archaic custody family law from 1962. No reform has been enacted on this law from Israel's Knesset. Just talk.

Fast forward.
So I could not fall asleep. And for good reason. As many psychologists have observed the limited time provided to fathers to be with their children is not enough and creates undue suffering and anxiety for both the father and child.
After all, how much love can one fit in with a 4 hour visit or one overnight?

The pain, suffering and trauma of being separated from your children is hard to articulate.
As a journalist, I have covered almost every terror attack in Israel over the last ten years and was reported from 9/11's Ground Zero just hours after the al-Qaeda terrorist attack on New York's World Trade Center.

But nothing, nothing I have ever experienced in these terror attacks or my combat service in the Israel Defense Forces could ever compare to having my kids taken away from me.

Respected artist and creator of Band Aid and Live Aid Bob Gelfof, a man who raised millions of dollars for victims of starvation in Africa, is also a divorced dad. He expresses the anguish and pain of living with "state child abuse" in a documentary which can be viewed at YouTube.com.

No amount of words that you read here or in any other Website can compare to the power of a picture.
As the saying goes: "a picture is worth a thousand words." And if a picture is worth a thousand words, then we are talking about millions of words with a video!

I can quote the American Psychological Association in stating that: "children from divorced families who either live with both parents at different times or spend certain amounts of time with each parent are better adjusted in most cases than children who live and interact with just one parent, according to new research on custody arrangements and children's adjustment."

Or read the facts illustrated by the National Fatherhood Initiative which state: "nearly 75 percent of children who live without a father in their home will experience poverty before they turn 11 years old. Violent criminals are usually male, and most of them grew up without fathers. They account for 60 percent of rapists in our country, 72 percent of adolescent murderers and 70 percent of long-term prison inmates."

But who will bother to read these hard facts? This respected research material did not work yesterday and it will not be effective tomorrow.

What we divorced dads need to do is to articulate on tape. On digital tape. Because only through a picture, through a video can one read our body language. Only through a video can other people really feel the pain, the trauma, the depression, the anxiety and the suffering that we endure. They can see our tears.

Bob Gelfof is a professional artist. He has experience in addressing thousands of people. And I in my roles as a journalist and international media advisor have also addressed thousands - as I am doing so now. But for both Bob and myself speaking about our kids is not anything like discussing pop music or the politics of the Middle-East. We share the same pain that embraces tens of thousands of dads in North America, Europe and the Middle East.

I did not plan on making a video for YouTube. I did not hire a professional film crew with special sound and lighting effects. Nah, I just went for it. Unedited, uncut and uploaded live and direct from my Webcam.
I spoke what I felt. I spoke slowly so that I could find the right words and that all would understand what I was saying.

I remembered the dilemma of one of the world's greatest writers, F. Scott Fitzgerald who came to a juncture where he could not write anymore. He told his publisher this. And his publisher responded: "Scott, then I want you to write about why you can't write." Fitzgerald took his publisher's advice and provided us with a masterpiece entitled: The Crack-Up.

So this is the same advice I am now providing to all divorced dads. Whether you live in New York, Mexico, Paris, Toronto, Jerusalem or London. Take a shower, get a haircut, brush your teeth and then turn on your Webcam for YouTube and tell the world your story. Do not speak of the details of your court case or mention your child's name.
By doing so you could be breaking the Privacy Law of your local or federal government. But no one (except Wikipedia which gagged me) will censor your pain as you tell the world how it feels to be separated from your children. How your children feel to be separated from you.

That because you are a man, you suffer from gender bias discrimination. That if you have served your country and carried a M-16, that today you are not allowed to carry your very own children.

Don't worry about making the perfect video. For in real life we humans have an affinity for what is real and truly human. For that reason we have hundreds of reality TV shows. You need not be a Steven Spielberg. But you do need to control your anger. No one enjoys listening to an aggressive or angry person. It just does not fit in with our human comfort zones. But given that half of the population is divorced, people will listen to what you have to say. Be polite, speak calmly, smile if you can and let the tears naturally fall.

This is far more potent tactic than the fine and truly creative awareness and educational campaigns performed by Fathers 4 Justice in England. You need not climb to the top of Big Ben or lower banners from Buckingham Palace.
Just speak slowly and tell your story.

The second stage following the creation of your first video is to make more videos. Flood the Net with divorced dads who love their children videos. Email these videos to your President or Prime Minister, your federal, state and local elected officials, family court judges, social workers who work in the local city child welfare department. Send these videos to your local media - print and broadcast.

Then seize the moment and take advantage of your public awareness campaign.
In order to achieve shared parenting and or joint custody with your kids to run for public office. Or back someone who directly reflects your family values.
Only from public office can you truly change the rules of the game. Can you then address the injustices that millions of children suffer from. For myself, I plan to run for mayor of the city of Ra'anana or put a candidate in office who places family first and foremost on their political agenda.

You can learn much from US presidential candidate Dr. Mark Klein, a retired psychiatrist who at the age of 64 is running for the White House and representing 25 percent of the population - divorced dads in America.

The alternative to the above is to join the 75 percent of the world's dads who have given up. Who have allowed their destructive ex-wives and callous governmental family court and child welfare systems to win. These dads have lost all contact with their children. We do not need to surrender. We do not need to be turned into visitors and victims.
We do not need to continue watching our children as they regress and suffer from having no father in their lives.

Go make a Youtube.com video.
Do it for your kids.
Do it for mine.