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Obituary: Muki Baum was a joyful fundraiser for the treatment centre that carried his name
Muki Baum was the inspiration for the MukiBaum Treatment Centre, a centre for children with complex disabilities. He was a highly visible member of Toronto’s Jewish community, raising more than $750,000 for the centre, soliciting donations outside United Bakers Dairy Restaurant, Holt Renfrew in the downtown shopping corridor and other busy locations around the city.
He was also the 2009 recipient of the Queen Elizabeth II Ontario Medal for Good Citizenship, which recognizes people who, through exceptional long-term efforts, have made outstanding contributions to the well-being of their communities.
“Of course he did all the wonderful work to fundraise,” said Cheryl Perera, president and CEO of Aptus Treatment Centre (which is what the MukiBaum Treatment Centre is now called). “You can contribute to the world. You can enjoy your life. I think that’s the legacy he leaves behind. And I think that’s the same vision that his mom had: for people to live a good life.”
The funeral home’s website is filled with messages from people who encountered Muki in his wheelchair and recalled his warmth and joyful approach to fundraising.
He died in Toronto after a short illness on Dec. 6, 2024.
Baum was born in Israel in 1959 with a severe hearing impairment and cerebral palsy. His mother, Nehama, had a degree in social work, and specialized in working with families whose children had cerebral palsy.
At that time the medical diagnosis was blunt, recommending he be institutionalized. But Nehama persevered with the belief that all children deserve to live as independent a life as possible.
“Some people think that I am different because I have cerebral palsy, and I am deaf. But I want you to know that I am a person, not a disability,” Baum said in the 2013 film, A Day in the Life of Muki. “When I was born, the doctors in Israel told my parents that I was a ‘piece of meat’ that they would carry the rest of their lives.”
By the time Muki was 15, Nehama faced a challenge. In Israel, Muki was either the only deaf child among children who had cerebral palsy or the only child with cerebral palsy among children who were hearing-impaired. She sought a solution that would allow him to thrive.
She had contacts in four North American cities: Toronto, San Francisco, Los Angeles and New York.
“I came to Toronto and I found everything I needed right here. I saw a city that was safe. As an Israeli, I saw a city where people came to the road and pointed their finger, and traffic would stop to allow people to cross the street. I said, ‘That is where I want to live, because that is where Muki can live safely,’” Nehama said in a documentary entitled The Muki Baum Project, about her life’s work. She never went to the three other cities.
She admitted that adapting to Muki’s newfound independence was an adjustment.
“Muki wanted to go out. He wanted to walk. There were buses that he wanted to take. He wanted to take the subway. He wanted to be independent.”
In 1979, Nehama Baum founded the MukiBaum Treatment Centre with a vision of enabling adults, youth and children living with multiple disabilities to thrive in their communities.
Nehama worked with specialists in different fields to ensure that the centre offered innovative approaches to helping their clients. “Nehama Baum saw a Snoezelen Room and was determined to create one,” said Rose Schonblum, producer of The Muki Baum Project. Soon the MukiBaum Treatment Centre offered this multisensory therapy with lights and water that provides a relaxing experience to help reduce agitation and anxiety.
Brenda Lass attended an open studio clay class with Muki at the Jewish Community Centre’s Koffler Centre in Toronto, where participants were free to create whatever they wanted.
“It was so much fun. He had such a personality. I went into studio, and it was really me and Muki. And I got to know him there. He was making an Israeli flag on a board. The flag was probably 15 inches by 18 inches, and I used to ask him how it was going to fly!
“Then one week he decided he wanted to go on the potters’ wheel. You have to be a contortionist to fit on it—I could hardly do it. You get into the thing, and you lean over and you have to balance the clay. And to see the two of us trying to get him onto it…. We just laughed and laughed!
“And then I would see him at Lawrence Plaza some years later. Right away, he recognized me. He was creative. He would sell cards that he’d made. There’s no question that he loved doing it.”
“When you have a kid like Muki, there are a lot of things you can complain about,” his father, Moshe, said in The Muki Baum Project. “But when you look at the whole picture, if Muki wasn’t sent to us as he is, the MukiBaum Treatment Centre wouldn’t exist, and hundreds of thousands of people are being helped because of him.”
Nehama said, “There is a very beautiful story called, ‘I Wanted to Get to Rome, but I Went to Amsterdam.’ Someone went on the plane and they thought they were going to Rome, but they found themselves in Amsterdam. Now, Amsterdam is not as beautiful as Rome, but it has its own beauty. And this is the metaphor for having a child. You’re pregnant, you think and dream about how the child will be and what at life will be like with your baby and then your child. And then you have Amsterdam and not Rome.”
Muki Baum is survived by his father, Moshe. He is predeceased by his mother, Nehama, who died in 2022.
The post Obituary: Muki Baum was a joyful fundraiser for the treatment centre that carried his name appeared first on The Canadian Jewish News.
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Israel Blocks Ramallah Meeting with Arab Ministers, Israeli Official Says
A closed Israeli military gate stands near Ramallah in the West Bank, February 18, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Ammar Awad
Israel will not allow a planned meeting in the Palestinian administrative capital of Ramallah, in the West Bank, to go ahead, an Israeli official said on Saturday, after Arab ministers planning to attend were stopped from coming.
The move, days after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s right-wing government announced one of the largest expansions of settlements in the West Bank in years, underlined escalating tensions over the issue of international recognition of a future Palestinian state.
Saturday’s meeting comes ahead of an international conference, co-chaired by France and Saudi Arabia, that is due to be held in New York on June 17-20 to discuss the issue of Palestinian statehood, which Israel fiercely opposes.
The delegation of senior Arab officials due to visit Ramallah – including the Jordanian, Egyptian, Saudi Arabian and Bahraini foreign ministers – postponed the visit after “Israel’s obstruction of it,” Jordan’s foreign ministry said in a statement, adding that the block was “a clear breach of Israel’s obligations as an occupying force.”
The ministers required Israeli consent to travel to the West Bank from Jordan.
An Israeli official said the ministers intended to take part in “a provocative meeting” to discuss promoting the establishment of a Palestinian state.
“Such a state would undoubtedly become a terrorist state in the heart of the land of Israel,” the official said. “Israel will not cooperate with such moves aimed at harming it and its security.”
A Saudi source told Reuters that Saudi Arabia’s Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan Al-Saud had delayed a planned trip to the West Bank.
Israel has come under increasing pressure from the United Nations and European countries which favour a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, under which an independent Palestinian state would exist alongside Israel.
French President Emmanuel Macron said on Friday that recognizing a Palestinian state was not only a “moral duty but a political necessity.”
Palestinians want the West Bank territory, which was seized by Israel in the 1967 Middle East war, as the core of a future state along with Gaza and East Jerusalem.
But the area is now criss-crossed with settlements that have squeezed some 3 million Palestinians into pockets increasingly cut off from each other though a network of military checkpoints.
Defense Minister Israel Katz said the announcement this week of 22 new settlements in the West Bank was an “historic moment” for settlements and “a clear message to Macron.” He said recognition of a Palestinian state would be “thrown into the dustbin of history.”
The post Israel Blocks Ramallah Meeting with Arab Ministers, Israeli Official Says first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Gaza Aid Supplies Hit by Looting as Hamas Ceasefire Response Awaited
Palestinians carry aid supplies which they received from the U.S.-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, in the central Gaza Strip, May 29, 2025. REUTERS/Ramadan Abed
Armed men hijacked dozens of aid trucks entering the Gaza Strip overnight and hundreds of desperate Palestinians joined in to take supplies, local aid groups said on Saturday as officials waited for Hamas to respond to the latest ceasefire proposals.
The incident was the latest in a series that has underscored the shaky security situation hampering the delivery of aid into Gaza, following the easing of a weeks-long Israeli blockade earlier this month.
US President Donald Trump said on Friday he believed a ceasefire agreement was close but Hamas has said it is still studying the latest proposals from his special Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff. The White House said on Thursday that Israel had agreed to the proposals.
The proposals would see a 60-day truce and the exchange of 28 of the 58 hostages still held in Gaza for more than 1,200 Palestinian prisoners and detainees, along with the entry of humanitarian aid into the enclave.
On Saturday, the Israeli military, which relaunched its air and ground campaign in March following a two-month truce, said it was continuing to hit targets in Gaza, including sniper posts and had killed what it said was the head of a Hamas weapons manufacturing site.
The campaign has cleared large areas along the boundaries of the Gaza Strip, squeezing the population of more than 2 million into an ever narrower section along the coast and around the southern city of Khan Younis.
Israel imposed a blockade on all supplies entering the enclave at the beginning of March in an effort to weaken Hamas and has found itself under increasing pressure from an international community shocked by the increasingly desperate humanitarian situation the blockade has created.
The United Nations said on Friday the situation in Gaza is the worst since the start of the war began 19 months ago, with the entire population facing the risk of famine despite a resumption of limited aid deliveries earlier this month.
Israel has been allowing a limited number of trucks from the World Food Program and other international groups to bring flour to bakeries in Gaza but deliveries have been hampered by repeated incidents of looting.
At the same time, a separate system, run by a US-backed group called the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation has been delivering meals and food packages at three designated distribution sites.
However, aid groups have refused to cooperate with the GHF, which they say is not neutral, and say the amount of aid allowed in falls far short of the needs of a population at risk of famine.
“The aid that’s being sent now makes a mockery of the mass tragedy unfolding under our watch,” Philippe Lazzarini, head of the main U.N. relief organization for Palestinians, said in a message on the social media platform X.
NO BREAD IN WEEKS
The World Food Program said it brought 77 trucks carrying flour into Gaza overnight and early on Saturday and all of them were stopped on the way, with food taken by hungry people.
“After nearly 80 days of a total blockade, communities are starving and they are no longer willing to watch food pass them by,” it said in a statement.
Amjad Al-Shawa, head of an umbrella group representing Palestinian aid groups, said the dire situation was being exploited by armed groups which were attacking some of the aid convoys.
He said hundreds more trucks were needed and accused Israel of a “systematic policy of starvation.”
Overnight on Saturday, he said trucks had been stopped by armed groups near Khan Younis as they were headed towards a World Food Programme warehouse in Deir Al-Balah in central Gaza and hundreds of desperate people had carried off supplies.
“We could understand that some are driven by hunger and starvation, some may not have eaten bread in several weeks, but we can’t understand armed looting, and it is not acceptable at all,” he said.
Israel says it is facilitating aid deliveries, pointing to its endorsement of the new GHF distribution centers and its consent for other aid trucks to enter Gaza.
Instead it accuses Hamas of stealing supplies intended for civilians and using them to entrench its hold on Gaza, which it had been running since 2007.
The post Gaza Aid Supplies Hit by Looting as Hamas Ceasefire Response Awaited first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Hamas Seeks Changes in US Gaza Proposal; Witkoff Calls Response ‘Unacceptable’
US President Donald Trump’s Middle East envoy-designate Steve Witkoff gives a speech at the inaugural parade inside Capital One Arena on the inauguration day of Trump’s second presidential term, in Washington, DC, Jan. 20, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Carlos Barria
Hamas said on Saturday it was seeking amendments to a US-backed proposal for a temporary ceasefire with Israel in Gaza, but President Donald Trump’s envoy rejected the group’s response as “totally unacceptable.”
The Palestinian terrorist group said it was willing to release 10 living hostages and hand over the bodies of 18 dead in exchange for Palestinian prisoners in Israeli prisons. But Hamas reiterated demands for an end to the war and withdrawal of Israeli troops from Gaza, conditions Israel has rejected.
A Hamas official described the group’s response to the proposals from Trump’s special Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff as “positive” but said it was seeking some amendments. The official did not elaborate on the changes being sought by the group.
“This response aims to achieve a permanent ceasefire, a complete withdrawal from the Gaza Strip, and to ensure the flow of humanitarian aid to our people in the Strip,” Hamas said in a statement.
The proposals would see a 60-day truce and the exchange of 28 of the 58 hostages still held in Gaza for more than 1,200 Palestinian prisoners and detainees, along with the entry of humanitarian aid into the enclave.
A Palestinian official familiar with the talks told Reuters that among amendments Hamas is seeking is the release of the hostages in three phases over the 60-day truce and more aid distribution in different areas. Hamas also wants guarantees the deal will lead to a permanent ceasefire, the official said.
There was no immediate response from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office to the Hamas statement.
Israel has previously rejected Hamas’ conditions, instead demanding the complete disarmament of the group and its dismantling as a military and governing force, along with the return of all 58 remaining hostages.
Trump said on Friday he believed a ceasefire agreement was close after the latest proposals, and the White House said on Thursday that Israel had agreed to the terms.
Saying he had received Hamas’ response, Witkoff wrote in a posting on X: “It is totally unacceptable and only takes us backward. Hamas should accept the framework proposal we put forward as the basis for proximity talks, which we can begin immediately this coming week.”
On Saturday, the Israeli military said it had killed Mohammad Sinwar, Hamas’ Gaza chief on May 13, confirming what Netanyahu said earlier this week.
Sinwar, the younger brother of Yahya Sinwar, the group’s deceased leader and mastermind of the October 2023 attack on Israel, was the target of an Israeli strike on a hospital in southern Gaza. Hamas has neither confirmed nor denied his death.
The Israeli military, which relaunched its air and ground campaign in March following a two-month truce, said on Saturday it was continuing to hit targets in Gaza, including sniper posts and had killed what it said was the head of a Hamas weapons manufacturing site.
The campaign has cleared large areas along the boundaries of the Gaza Strip, squeezing the population of more than 2 million into an ever narrower section along the coast and around the southern city of Khan Younis.
Israel imposed a blockade on all supplies entering the enclave at the beginning of March in an effort to weaken Hamas and has found itself under increasing pressure from an international community shocked by the desperate humanitarian situation the blockade has created.
On Saturday, aid groups said dozens of World Food Program trucks carrying flour to Gaza bakeries had been hijacked by armed groups and subsequently looted by people desperate for food after weeks of mounting hunger.
“After nearly 80 days of a total blockade, communities are starving and they are no longer willing to watch food pass them by,” the WFP said in a statement.
‘A MOCKERY’
The incident was the latest in a series that has underscored the shaky security situation hampering the delivery of aid into Gaza, following the easing of a weeks-long Israeli blockade earlier this month.
The United Nations said on Friday the situation in Gaza is the worst since the start of the war 19 months ago, with the entire population facing the risk of famine despite a resumption of limited aid deliveries earlier this month.
“The aid that’s being sent now makes a mockery of the mass tragedy unfolding under our watch,” Philippe Lazzarini, head of the main U.N. relief organization for Palestinians, said in a message on X.
Israel has been allowing a limited number of trucks from the World Food Program and other international groups to bring flour to bakeries in Gaza but deliveries have been hampered by repeated incidents of looting.
A separate system, run by a US-backed group called the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, has been delivering meals and food packages at three designated distribution sites.
However, aid groups have refused to cooperate with the GHF, which they say is not neutral, and say the amount of aid allowed in falls far short of the needs of a population at risk of famine.
Amjad Al-Shawa, head of an umbrella group representing Palestinian aid groups, said the dire situation was being exploited by armed groups which were attacking some of the aid convoys.
He said hundreds more trucks were needed and accused Israel of a “systematic policy of starvation.”
Israel denies operating a policy of starvation and says it is facilitating aid deliveries, pointing to its endorsement of the new GHF distribution centers and its consent for other aid trucks to enter Gaza.
Instead it accuses Hamas of stealing supplies intended for civilians and using them to entrench its hold on Gaza, which it had been running since 2007.
Hamas denies looting supplies and has executed a number of suspected looters.
The post Hamas Seeks Changes in US Gaza Proposal; Witkoff Calls Response ‘Unacceptable’ first appeared on Algemeiner.com.