"M. knows what the meeting is for, and in his way he explains his need to get help because he's afraid of flying... He projects on the flight the fear of the lack of control he feels in his life in the face of the fear of deportation. This is how he also lives the trauma he experienced with incarceration, with fears of sounds he hears at night that cause him to wake up.
His acquaintance with Israel constitutes an exclusive environment in which his life is shaped by customs, language, friends, the calendar - all of these help him to consolidate control over his life, which may be unraveled on a flight to an unknown land and pose a risk to his continued normal development...
Michael's vision of the future has elements that are appropriate for his age... But it also has signs of a break in its future developmental continuum...
He also understands with great sadness that the main difference in his life is that all the other children sleep safely at night and he is afraid every night of sounds that will wake him up and put him on a plane.
Of all the sporting activities, he prefers running... Because he's the best at evading, so that he won't be caught.
The self-experience that involves alertness and self-preservation, with the ability to evade and not get caught, is next to another self-experience that is not simple, of being transparent, without a house that sits on stable ground..."
Dr. Daniella Cohen summarizes her opinion as follows:
Any tearing from the children's safe space [the educational frameworks, the "adoptive" family, the calendar with its holidays, and the Hebrew language] poses a risk to their continued normal development.
For both children, it is evident that the experience of incarceration and deportation is a break in their developmental continuum. Alongside the forces that both discover are appropriate for their age, there is an anxiety that undermines their self-confidence, an anxiety that has feelings of collapse and extinction. Living with the experience of ongoing trauma that the threat of expulsion constitutes, endangers the integrity of the developmental experience of their self...
- and M.'s childhood experiences are rooted in the environment in which they grew up. These experiences help develop their self-image and identity. Uprooting from the environment in which they live may endanger their continued normal development and create a disruption in their personality development...
Therefore, and with all the implications of the findings of the diagnosis, it is recommended that the threat of imprisonment and deportation be removed and that S. and M. continue to develop properly in the environment in which they live."