Scottish academic works to end Israel’s ‘baby warehouses’

Crowded into basements and small flats, underpaid and untrained women look after the children of asylum seekers in Israel’s “baby warehouses”.

Reports of deaths in such conditions have led to calls for government action.

Now Bart Mcgettrick, professor of education emeritus at the University of Glasgow, has helped set up a project with the Catholic Church to eradicate baby warehouses and give employment to the mothers by helping them look after a small number of babies at home.

The mothers are refugees and illegal immigrants working to survive after making the long trek to cities such as Tel Aviv from war-zones including Eritrea and South Sudan.

Their husbands are usually arrested on arrival and the women, who work unofficially, cannot afford any other form of childcare.

Prof Mcgettrick, from Glasgow, director of the newly establish Vatican Foundation of St John The Baptist, which focuses on education in the Middle East, said he had seen babies in rooms lying on shelves side-by-side, with one supervisor in charge.

“When you go into one of these rooms your life is changed forever, You’d never walk away and do nothing.

“There is the horror. But you are also overcome by the smell. And the silence. They know already not to cry because there’s no point, no-one will help them. Their mothers are only able to return once or twice a day to breast feed them.

“From a humanitarian point of view this cannot be right.”

Approximately 5,000 babies and infants of asylum seekers are believed to attend around 100 facilities in Tel Aviv alone.

“What we’ve being doing is saying to ten mothers ‘you give us a room in your house and we’ll kit it out as a daycare centre, we’ll train you as a day care worker.’ We’re trying to educate them to care for around six children at home.

Yehuda Avivi, embassy of Israel spokesman, said: “The State of Israel provides free education for children aged three years old and above.

“Illegal immigrants have created their own educational system for their children aged zero to three, with unacceptable conditions.

“Even though Israeli citizens in this age group are not entitled to free education, the Israeli government – together with the municipality of Tel Aviv – has invested millions of pounds in building kindergartens for the children of the illegal immigrants. These kindergartens do not cost the parents any money. Since this project began, the situation has improved considerably, and we aim to bring these practices to an end completely.”