JERUSALEM (VINnews) — Eitan Biran, the sole survivor of the cable car crash in Northern Italy in May which took the lives of his parents, mother’s grandparents and brother, has been smuggled back to Israel by his other grandfather. The boy has been the subject of a struggle for adoption between two of his aunts, the Italian-based sister of his father and the Israeli sister of his mother. Recently he was placed by his Italian aunt, Dr. Aya Biran-Nirko, in a Catholic school run by nuns and monks.
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Relatives in Israel, including his aunt, Gali Peleg, had claimed that Biran’s parents, Amit and Tal, had wanted him to receive a Jewish education in Israel and not to be placed in a non-Jewish environment.
Eitan’s grandfather arrived in Italy last week in order to meet his grandchild. A few hours later he was supposed to return the child to the family of Biran-Nirko which had adopted the child in Italy but the grandfather disconnected his phone and did not respond to them. A few hours later the grandfather landed in Israel together with Eitan.
The Milan Jewish community said that Aya Biran-Nirko had tried unsuccessfully to contact the grandfather. Later the family received notification from a lawyer that “Eitan has returned home.”
Originally after the accident, Biran-Nirko took care of Eitan since she speaks Italian and understands the local bureaucracy but the grandparents claim that Eitan’s parents would not have wanted him to be brought up in Italy and in a non-Jewish school.
An Italian court ruled that the family should deposit Eitan’s Israeli passport but this was not done and eventually the passport allowed him to return to Israel with his grandfather. Dr. Biran-Nirko registered a complaint with local police claiming that Eitan was kidnapped.
The Peleg family has not yet responded to claims that Eitan was smuggled away to Israel but the Foreign Ministry confirmed that he was in Israel and the matter is under investigation.
Is this kidnapping?
Chasdai Hashem!
How sad.
Not only this poor boy lost his family at such a tender age, he needs to go through so much Xtra tzar with this aunt.
Let’s daven bezH that this grandfather gets to keep him so he can get what’s best for him
With the caveat that there is often more to the story than initial reports give you, IF the facts are as reported here, then kol hakavod to the saba. Another Edgardo Mortara story avoided.
Let’s daven that this case has a better ending than the Yossele Shumacher case.
Why wouldn’t the grandfather be allowed custody as next of kin? I don’t think it’s kidnapping at all. It’s saving a Jewish neshama
This is tribal savagery
The Brisker Rav observed that, during the Holocaust, the Jews who ended up in Catholic monasteries were, in a sense, better off than those who ended up becoming worse than goyim in the clutches of the Zionists.
At least in the monastery they were taught some form (a corrupted one, to be sure, but still something) of emunah in Hashem. Whereas the Zionists turned (many of) them into total goyim.
So, the question is what kind of upbringing will the Israeli relatives give him in the Zionist paradise? It could very well be that from a religious perspective he would have been better off in Italy.
If true, it is absolutely shameful.