The Professor's name is Simona (Sima) Sharoni. Her academic credentials are here. This is from the second of the three links above.
Sharoni, a professor at the State University of New York at
Plattsburgh in the Gender and Women's Studies Department, said that both
the conflict and campus sexual assault feature institutionalized
disparity of power as a linchpin.
Sharoni articulated that the
pro-Israel narrative embraces a victim-blaming narrative akin to "she
was asking for it" allegations common in rape culture. "The assumption
that Palestinians bring the violence on themselves...it's similar to
telling a survivor that it's what she was wearing," Sharoni said.
Additionally, she asserted that supporters of Israel engage in a
behavior analogous to discrediting rape victims in their repudiation of
Palestinian claims.
"Palestinians are not believed, which is the
same with survivors [of sexual assault]. It's very similar to saying,
'No, he's actually a nice guy,' about a man accused of rape," Aharoni
remarked.
The professor concluded her interview by explaining
that drawing parallels between campus rape and the "Israeli apartheid"
is strategically advantageous for both the BDS movement as well as
sexual assault survivors groups because it serves as "a means to an
end...to create a just and equal society."
Well, Israel's treatment of 'Palestinians' does have something in common with campus rapes. It's widely exaggerated in the media, and the media reports about it (as well as the crimes themselves) are often based on lies by people who want to create abuse that doesn't exist. Often, both are based on fiction.
Israeli soldier called a racist beccause he never raped a 'Palestinian'
But for the fact that we have heard similar accusations made in the past, I would find this story beyond belief. A former IDF soldier on a speaking tour of US college campuses in the Pacific Northwest suffered from charges of 'racism' because he never - and didn't know of any other IDF soldier who had - raped a 'Palestinian' woman.
BDS rhetoric makes Nazi rhetoric look sensible and reasonable because it taps into whatever dementia is in the air.
At a BDS event in Portland, a professor from a Seattle
university told the assembled crowd that the Jews of Israel have no
national rights and should be forced out of the country. When I asked,
“Where do you want them to go?” she calmly answered, “I don’t care. I
don’t care if they don’t have any place else to go. They should not be
there.”
When I responded that she was calling for ethnic cleansing, both she and her supporters denied it.
And during a presentation in Seattle, I spoke about my longing for
peace between Israel and the Palestinians. When I was done, a woman in
her 60’s stood up and yelled at me, “You are worse than the Nazis. You
are just like the Nazi youth!”
A number of times I was repeatedly accused of being a killer, though I have never hurt anyone in my life.
On other occasions, anti-Israel activists called me a rapist. The
claims go beyond being absurd – in one case, a professor asked me if I
knew how many Palestinians have been raped by IDF forces. I answered
that as far as I knew, none.
She triumphantly responded that I was right, because, she said, “You
IDF soldiers don’t rape Palestinians because Israelis are so racist and
disgusted by them that you won’t touch them.”
You’re a rapist? You’re not a rapist? Why do you hate Palestinian Arab women? Why won’t you rape them? You’re a racist!
7 Jewish girls abducted by Bedouin in the Negev last month, at least one raped
The girls in this picture have no connection to this story. In fact, it's a sad comment on the state of our people that when I did a Google image search for 'Jewish girls' (no quotation marks), every one that came up before this one was arguably pornographic.
Seven Jewish girls between the ages of 11-18 have been abducted in the past month by Bedouin men in southern Israel. At least one was raped.
Seven victims last month alone are aged 11-18. These are only cases that were reported to police but many others are believed to have taken place without being reported.
Complaints were filed to the police in four cases of such abductions last month in Kiryat Malachi alone, and a fifth case of rape.
Voice of Israel radio said that all four cases of abductions in Kiryat Malachi involved young Bedouin men. The rape took place on the Ashkelon beach last weekend.
In one of the abduction cases, two men from the Bedouin city of Rahat, aged 40 and 24, were arrested, but one has since been released.
In the rape case, the main suspect is a resident of the Palestinian Authority who is illegally staying inside pre-1949 Israel. He has been charged and two other Arabs who were also present at the scene of the crime face lesser charges.
Voice of Israel's reporter in southern Israel, Asaf Kuzailov, said that the phenomenon is on the rise and is a well known one – to residents, to police and welfare authorities. It is confirmed by the Center for Assistance to Women in the Negev.
Some of you may recall that a few years ago, I posted the story of a woman whose rescue by the IDF was arranged by Yad l'Achim during Operation Cast Lead. Yad l'Achim is involved here as well:
Police say that they can only get involved in cases where a specific complaint has been filed, and where there is evidence of abduction and abuse. Police and welfare elements note that the cases do not necessarily start as kidnappings. Often the relationships are consensual at first, with the Arabs plying the girls with money, gifts, attention and warmth that they lack at home. In other cases, the contention is that the girls who were taken to the Arab villages later returned home, and so the men cannot be charged with abduction.
The abuse often begins at a later stage and by then it is hard to determine that the girls are not responsible for their actions, they said.
Voice of Israel reported a specific case of a girl they called Tania from Ashkelon, who fell in love with an Arab from Gaza and moved in with him. After she became pregnant she was tied up at home for days on end and beaten. This happened five years ago, and she is now back in Israel, but still suffers from trauma.
Yad L'Achim says about 1,000 cases of Jewish girls being held against their will by Arabs occur every year.
"While separation of buses in the hareidi sector and religious soldiers' requests to be excused from immodest performances receive top headlines for months on end, thanks to militant feminist politicians and journalists, actual rape and abduction of minor girls is swept under the rug by these groups because it is carried out by their Arab darlings," the group's chairman, Gil Ronen, said. "Unfortunately, nationalist and religious women have not made an effort to forge an independent agenda for their groups, and are content to be led by the ultra-leftists, who use them for bashing religious men and Jewish religion in general.
By the way, I believe that Yad l'Achim's annual appeal is in the next couple of weeks. If you're able to do so, you ought to consider making a contribution to them.
I'm about to run out to my morning shiur (this is being posted several minutes before you will see it), and Israel radio is reporting live that the Supreme Court is in the process of reading its opinion and affirming the conviction of former President Moshe Katzav for rape.
However, they may still reduce the seven-year prison sentence that the district court imposed.
I will have more about this after 10:15.
For those who call us an 'apartheid state,' the three justice panel is headed by a woman and includes an Arab.
UPDATE 10:47 AM
The Supreme Court rejected the appeal completely. Katzav goes to jail for seven years starting December 7 (anyone else would have been sent to jail immediately).
"A deep sadness falls over the State of Israel because a person who was a minister in the government, the deputy prime minister and the president of the country carried out these acts," the ruling read. "The hardest thing of all is to see that the person who used to be the symbol of the land of Israel is going to prison."
The ruling went on to call rape "one of the most terrible crimes," and added that the worst thing is that "he did it in the President's Residence, at the height of his public career" and "used his power to carry out rape and sexual assault against hist staff."
The former president looked visibly upset as the verdict was read.
The court rejected Katsav's defense that Aleph's version of the encounter between the two is a lie because she didn't complain at the time but waited until later. The ruling said there was no doubt that Katsav carried out the act with force.
The court also did not accept the line of defense that there was a romance between Aleph and Katsav.
Immediately after the ruling was read, Katsav's lawyer, Zion Amir, requested a further postponement of several weeks. The court responded that Katsav must report to the Tel Aviv District court on December 7, 2011 to begin his prison term.
At the end of the court session, Israel Radio interviewed Avigdor Feldman, one of the country's most prominent Leftist attorneys, who was one of Katzav's attorneys. Feldman blasted the Supreme Court for just accepting everything the lower court said. It will be interesting to see whether Feldman is disciplined. Less prominent and more Right-leaning attorneys would stand a much better chance of being disciplined for the scathing attack that Feldman made on the court.
Gadhafi distributing viagra to troops to encourage rape
This post is probably going to earn me a lot of spam comments.
Libyan dictator Muammar Gadhafi has been distributing viagra to his troops in a bid to encourage them to rape opposition women.
The rape allegation is not new. It was raised in the UN Security Council in April by US Ambassador Susan Rice, who said some of Gaddafi's troops had been issued with the impotency drug Viagra. Moreno-Ocampo said in an interview with Reuters on May 2 he was investigating the allegation.
At a UN news conference on Wednesday, he said the question until recently had been whether Gaddafi himself could be associated with the rapes "or is it something that happened in the barracks?"
"But now we are getting some information that Gaddafi himself decided" to authorize the rapes, "and this is new," Moreno-Ocampo said.
"It never was the pattern he used to control the population. The rape is a new aspect of the repression," he said. "Apparently, he decided to punish using rapes."
Moreno-Ocampo repeated the allegation of use of impotency drugs, saying his team was finding "some elements" confirming the purchase of "Viagra type of medicaments." He said there was evidence of Libya acquiring "containers" of such drugs "to enhance the possibility to rape women."
The prosecutor said it was difficult to know how widespread the rape was but he had received information there were several hundred victims in some areas.
Gadhafi could have accomplished the same thing by handing out copies of the Koran. It advocates raping captive women too. Maybe the troops were too tired.
CBS News reporter Lara Logan was the story on 60 Minutes on Sunday night.
Let's go to the videotape.
Notice what she said set the crowd off? That they said she was an Israeli Jew. She described that as being like lighting a flame for them. What do you think these people - who have a peace treaty with us - would do to Israeli Jews if God forbid they were given a chance? Remember the Ramallah lynch? If they could have finished Logan - whom they believed to be an Israeli Jew - off that way they would have been pleased to do so.
So it was about Logan being a woman (and being blond) until they decided she was an Israeli Jew. Then it became about tearing her apart limb by limb just like those two Israeli soldiers. It was no longer about sex (if it ever was). It was about power. It was about tearing apart the infidel (Israeli) Jew. She is lucky to be alive.
Phyllis Chesler criticizes Logan for not referring to her tormentors once on the air as Muslims. Nor, writes Chesler, does she seem to blame them at all. In fact, Chesler finds Logan's description to be too politically correct.
With all due respect both for Logan’s terrible ordeal and for her choice to “break the silence,” how naive can she have been? How frightened is she still now? Does Logan fear she will lose her mainstream media credentials if she analyzes what happened to her in feminist and political terms?
I think she does. While she has told the truth about what happened to her, her careful, cautious, exceedingly politically correct presentation suggests that many hands were, once again, behind what she said and how she said it.
Logan was born in South Africa where the sexual violence against girls and women is extreme. She was born in Africa where gang-rape and rape have been employed not as a spoil of war but as a systematic weapon of war (think Rwanda, Darfur, Congo, Liberia). She is a reporter at a time in history when both infidel and Muslim women are routinely raped—then arrested for it, raped again by their jailers, then flogged, hung, or stoned for the crime of having been raped. Think Iran. Think Pakistan.
And finally, it is a well known fact that the male sexual harassment of women on the streets of Egypt is pandemic. One survey documented that 98% of infidel or foreign women and 88% of Egyptian women have been harassed on these mean streets. Thus, should women reporters not cover Muslim countries?
Guess what? Muslim men also rape Muslim and infidel boys as well as foreign male journalists whom they also torture and behead. (Think Daniel Pearl.) There is a long history of Muslim men kidnapping, enslaving, selling, branding, and castrating infidel men as well as selling infidel women as sex slaves.
Another Lara Logan: NY Times photographer sexually harassed in Libya
I'm sure that this is all just a coincidence and that the treatment that New York Times photographer Lynsey Addario endured in captivity in Libya has nothing - nothing at all - to do with the treatment Lara Logan endured at the hands of a mob in Cairo and certainly nothing - nothing at all - to do with Arab Muslim attitudes toward women.
One man grabbed her breasts – the start of a pattern of sexual harassment she endured over the ensuing 48 hours.
‘There was a lot of groping,’ she said. ‘Every man who came in contact with us basically felt every inch of my body short of what was under my clothes.’
As she was being driven away from Ajdabiya, she said another of her captors stroked her head and told her repeatedly that she was going to be killed.
‘He was caressing my head in this sick way, this tender way, saying, "You’re going to die tonight. You’re going to die tonight",‘ she added.
Miss Addario was with Anthony Shadid, the paper’s Beirut bureau chief, photographer Tyler Hicks and reporter and videographer Stephen Farrell when they were seized while leaving the scene of fighting between rebels and Libyan government forces because they decided it had become too dangerous.
Their driver inadvertently drove into a checkpoint manned by troops loyal to the Libyan dictator.
‘I was yelling to the driver, "Keep driving! Don’t stop! Don’t stop!",' said Mr Hicks. ‘I knew that the consequences of being stopped would be very bad.’
There's nothing to see here, so just move on. They just sound like 'ordinary' adolescent males, don't they?
Convicted rapist Moshe Katzav, who was once President of Israel, was sentenced on Tuesday to seven years in jail, two years probation and a NIS 125,000 fine (NIS 3.554 = $1).
Katsav broke down in tears upon hearing the judges decision, saying " they are wrong. They made a serious mistake. it will be proven. The lie won today, you will all see."
He added, "the women know that they lied. I was not given a chance to defend myself...you kept interrupting my testimony.
Judge George Karra read out the argument for sentencing , saying that "The victims of the accused were subject to sexual harassment and were in distressful situations that caused them to be affraid... The repeated nature of the offenses over a long period of time shows a behavior pattern that is a reason for harsh punishment."
The judge also blamed Katsav's behavior for the delay in the indictment.
"Katsav's high rank can't be taken to his credit, on the contrary it makes his acts more severe," Karra said. "The higher the rank, the greater the dissapointment," he added
"It is Katsav's high rank that makes this case unique, not the crimes themselves," the judge said.
The decision brought to an end a two-year trial and a saga that has fascinated the Israeli public for more than five years.
The affair started with claims by Katsav that he was being blackmailed by an employee, and continued through a long investigation into suspicions that he had committed sexual offenses, revelations that a string of women had claimed he raped them, a plea bargain that would have acquitted him from all major charges but which he quickly canceled, two harsh press conferences at which he hurled blanket accusations at the press, and finally a long, seemingly endless trial that culminated in a decisive conviction in December.
Since that day, on which the former president was convicted of two counts of rape, sexual harassment, committing an indecent act while using force, witness harassment and obstruction of justice, the question on everyone’s mind was whether he would serve time in prison and, if so, for how long. A February 22 pre-sentence hearing, in which prosecutors and Katsav’s lawyers presented arguments, failed to reveal much information because the state did not request a specific number of years in prison.
Both the former president and his lawyers have said that what he went through in the years since the affair came to light was punishment enough for a lifetime. During the pre-sentencing hearing, his lawyers referred to him as “a broken vessel” and “a zombie.”
Throughout the trial, he maintained his innocence and continued to accuse his victims of fabricating stories.
When he gets out of jail, Katzav can keep looking for the 'real rapists.'
The amazing thing is that his wife continues to stand by him.
Katzav, who was Israel's first 'observant President' (one of his first acts was to install a synagogue in the President's mansion) is a walking desecration of God's name.
I'm sure you'll all be shocked - just shocked - at Benny Morris' disclosure that Libyan dictator Muammar Gadhafi once tried to rape a Western reporter (Hat Tip: Elder of Ziyon).
The Arab world – as embodied in the Arab League – for decades, perhaps not happily, covered and apologised for this bizarre creature, pardoning his barbarism and ignoring his laughable, and sometimes deadly, quirks. Of course, his fellow Arab leaders, to a man, had all tortured and jailed and murdered their opponents. Still, in many ways Qaddafi outdid them. His Green Book was full of gibberish, rivalled in nonsense only by Mao's Red Book; he wore weird hats and large dark sunglasses and had a constant three-day bristle (in this he seems to have consciously aped Yasser Arafat). And, of course, Qaddafi – of beduin extraction - made a point of living (or at least appearing to live) in a tent in the backyard of one of his palaces (and in New York City and other places; tents have the virtue of travelling well).
Which reminds me of a story a fine, young journalist once told me about her experiences in Tripoli. It was in the 1980s, I think. She had come to interview Qaddafi. She was ushered into the famous tent. Qaddafi sent his aides away and the two of them shared lunch. And then Qaddafi tried to caress her. Flustered, she got up to leave. He then chased her around the table, bent on rape. She was brave and apparently fit; she outran him, at least long enough for his aides to rush in at the sound of her screams. Rape averted.
It is a shame journalists did not usually publish their impressions of and experiences with Qaddafi. This no doubt facilitated Western and Arab acceptance of cooperation with this almost unique, base specimen of humanity (perhaps Saddam Hussein came closest).
A shame but oh so common. A year or two ago an American network covered up in return for access to key government officials in a Muslim country (I think it was Iran, but I can't find it in Google). Closer to home, an Italian network apologized to the 'Palestinian Authority' for doing its job and covering the lynch of two IDF soldiers - with video - in 2000. So why should we be surprised when a Western network covers up an attempted rape perpetrated against one of its own correspondents by the local despot? Isn't it always this way?
The attack on Lara Logan in Cairo two weeks ago was carried out by Muslims who believed it was their religious duty writes Andy McCarthy.
You are just supposed to assume it was a “mob” — the sort of thing that could have happened in any setting where raw emotion erupts, say, Wisconsin’s capitol.
Except it doesn’t happen in Madison. It happens in Egypt. It happened in Indonesia, the world’s most populous Muslim country, in the riots that led to Suharto’s fall — as Sharon Lapkin recounts, human-rights groups interviewed more than 100 women who had been captured and gang raped, including many Chinese women, who were told this was their fate as non-Muslims. It happens in Muslim countries and in the Muslim enclaves of Europe and Australia, perpetrated by Islamic supremacists acting on a sense of entitlement derived from their scriptures, fueled by the rage of their jihad, and enabled by the deafening silence of the media.
As Jihad Watch director Robert Spencer has detailed, al-Azhar University endorses a sharia manual called Umdat al-Salik. It is quite clear on the subject of women who become captives of Muslim forces: “When a child or a woman is taken captive, they become slaves by the fact of capture, and the woman’s previous marriage is immediately annulled.” This is so the woman can then be made a concubine of her captor.
This arrangement is encouraged by the Koran. Sura 4:23–24, for example, forbids Muslim men from consorting with the wives of other Muslims but declares sexual open season on any women these men have enslaved. (“Forbidden to you are . . . married women, except those whom you own as slaves.”) Moreover, Mohammed — whose life Muslims are exhorted by scripture to emulate — rewarded his fighters by distributing as slaves the women of the Jewish Qurazyzah tribe after Muslim forces had beheaded their husbands, fathers, and sons. The prophet himself also took one of the captured women, Rayhanna, as his concubine. And, as Spencer further notes, Mohammed directed his jihadists that they should not practice coitus interruptus with their slaves — they were encouraged to ravish them, but only in a manner that might produce Muslim offspring.
Sexual assault of CBS reporter in Egypt: Horrifying but not surprising
I am sure that by now you have all heard the story of Lara Logan, the CBS News reporter who was sexually assaulted while covering the celebrations in Tahrir Square last Friday night. On Wednesday, we received the additional detail that while Logan was being assaulted, her assailants were screaming "Jew, Jew" (Hat Tip: Memeorandum).
While Logan's assault is horrifying, it's not surprising. The Arabs in general - and the Egyptians in particular - are known for this sort of thing. This is from a 2006 post by the Sandmonkey - one of the first things I ever read on his blog.
The story is as follows for the those of you who didn't hear about it: It was the first day of Eid, and a new film was opening downtown. Mobs of males gatherd trying to get in, but when the show was sold out, they decided they will destroy the box office. After accomplishing that, they went on what can only be described as a sexual frenxy: They ran around grabbing any and every girl in sight, whether a niqabi, a Hijabi or uncoverd. Whether egyptian or foreigner. Even pregnant ones. They grabbed them, molested them, tried to rip their cloths off and rape them, all in front of the police, who didn't do shit. The good people of downtown tried their best to protect the girls. Shop owners would let the girls in and lock the doors, while the mobs tried to break in. Taxi drivers put the girls in the cars while the mobs were trying to break the glass and grab the girls out. It was a disgusting pandamonium of sexual assaults that lasted for 5 houres from 7:30 PM to 12:30 am, and it truns my stomach just to think about it.
I called my father when I heard of that happening, and he informed me that he didn't hear of it at all. They watched Al Jazeerah, CNN, flipped through opposition newspapers, and nothing. Nada. Nobody mentioned it. As if it didn't happen.
But it did.
...
Now, the egyptian blogsphere has been abuzz in debate over the incident. Some are writing posts on why it happend, possible causes, what it means, the social and political factors that could possibly lead to this behavior, and quite honestly, I can't be botherd. I don't care why it happend. Rape is not up for debate. I just care that it happend. What we should discuss right now isn't what caused it, but what kind of horrible punishment that should be enacted on any egyptian male who thinks that it is well into his right to sexually harass a female on the street. That's it. Pure and simple.
I am often told that I am too westernized or too liberal by people I know, and they are not wrong or inaccurate. My values are for the most part western values. However, there are two middle-eastern traits in me that I can never give up: The first is my stupid insistince on always paying for the bill when I am with a girl I am dating, and the second is my protectiveness of women. I have no tolerance for those who assault women sexually in any way, and that almost got me kicked out of my school in Boston when I broke the leg of one of my roommates who raped a friend of mine. The incident only resulted in him getting a broken leg because people stoped me before I killed him. And I had the full intention of killing him. Rapists do not deserve to live. And that's how I feel towards every single one of those pieces of shit that attacked women on the streets of cairo the other day.
People can debate solutions based on dialogue, education, or whatever and that's their right. My solution is far simpler: Any egyptian man whose mother raised him right should beat the living crap of any man he sees on the street that assaults or harasses a female. Think of them as your sisters, and act accordingly. The Police isn't interested in protecting the women, and that's fine, but that means that we should take this job as our own. Those who insist on acting like animals will be treated as such, and deserve no sympathy or mercy from us. I assure you, if we did this, if we undertook this as part of our national duty, there will no longer be a problem on our streets.
That is all!
Let's go to the videotape. This one is from 2008.
The second reason I wasn't surprised by the assault was when I saw the picture of Logan at the top of this post. Several years ago, the wife of a friend confided in me that she had been raped before they were married. She was assaulted by an Arab man right here in Jerusalem, and she told me that she attributed the assault that she was blond and that she was wearing her hair loose. She said that blonds have to be particularly careful around Arab men, and she advised wearing their hair tight and in a bun. Look at Logan's picture. See what I mean?
But let’s just remember one thing going forward: Nir Rosen believed this was the right moment to let the world know that he “ran out of sympathy for her” and that we should “remember her role as a major war monger” and that we “have to find humor in the small things.”
I hope Rosen never finds employment again. Those remarks are inexcusable.
I've been critical of Israel's judiciary on many occasions for taking cases regardless of the parties' lack of standing and the cases' lack of justiciability - particularly the court's penchant for deciding political questions. But it was hard not to feel some pride last week at the judicial system for convicting former President Moshe Katzav of rape, sexual assault and sexual harassment. Alan Dershowitz uses that conviction to go a step further, and to use the judiciary's independence to demolish the argument that claims of 'war crimes' against the IDF need to be heard anywhere outside of Israel.
But the most important reason why any investigation of Israel would be "inadmissible" under the law is that the statute that governs the ICC specifically provides that a case against a nation is "inadmissible" if that country has a judicial system that is "independently and impartially" willing and able to apply the rule of law to its own citizens.
Here is what the statute says:
"the Court shall determine that a case is inadmissible where:
(a) The case is being investigated or prosecuted by a State which has jurisdiction over it, unless the State is unwilling or unable genuinely to carry out the investigation or prosecution"
In order to determine whether this criteria has been met:
"the Court shall consider whether, due to a total or substantial collapse or unavailability of its national judicial system, the State is unable to obtain the accused or the necessary evidence and testimony or otherwise unable to carry out its proceedings."
Even Israel's enemies concede that the Israeli judiciary is a model of independence and impartiality. A poll of West Bank Palestinians demonstrated that the institution they would most like to see their own "government" emulate is the Israeli judiciary, which is open to all, including West Bank Palestinians, and which routinely rules against the Israeli government and military.
If any more proof were needed of the ability and willingness of the Israeli courts to do impartial justice, the recent trial and conviction of Israel's former president for the serious crime of rape, surely provides it. Whether that decision was right or wrong on the merits –the evidence of rape was deemed questionable even by the prosecutor—the fact that a former president was tried and convicted is virtually unprecedented among democracies. Nor is this the only case in which high ranking officials have been brought down by the Israeli legal system.
The late Prime Minister Yitzchak Rabin was forced out of office by legal proceeding. Former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert is currently under investigation. Former Prime Minister Ariel Sharon was being investigated at the time of his coma. And others have been investigated, tried and convicted, as well. What other nation can boast a stronger record of judicial independence?
Moreover, several soldiers involved in alleged crimes during the Gaza War have been prosecuted and convicted, and other investigations are underway.
As miserable as the Katzav trial has been for this country, Marty Peretz does a good job of putting it in perspective.
Two observations:
1. The court that rendered the verdict of guilty consisted of three senior judges. Two are women and the other is an Arab who read out the long opinion. This, too, is representative of the Israeli system of justice.
2. In many Muslim countries, among them societies in the Arab Middle East, such a proceeding would be unthinkable. In fact, women who pressed such charges against any man, let alone one so powerful, would probably be stoned to death. This is one reason there are few accusations of rape in the world of Islam.
But as my mother, may she rest in peace, used to say, and as I always say to my kids, do you really want to be compared with them?
Israel's 8th President, Moshe Katzav, has been convicted of two counts of rape by a three-judge panel of the Tel Aviv district court. Katzav was also convicted of sexual assault and sexual harassment in two other incidents. The court also said that he lied in his testimony.
Former president Moshe Katsav was charged with raping former Tourism Minsitry worker "Aleph," in the Tel Aviv District Court on Thursday morning.
"The event in the accused's office happened," the judges said. "Aleph said no - she expressed dissent. This is not sexual harassment, this is rape."
The judges said that just because Aleph complained years after the event, does not mean that she is lying.
"Aleph is honest and speaking the truth, while Katsav's testimony is full of lies," the judges determined.
Judge George Kara quoted Aleph as saying: "I knocked on the door, and he was wearing just a shirt, and came close to me. I told him 'enough, stop,' but he continued for ten minutes."
Katsav was also charged with sexually assault of Heh, who worked at Beit Hanassi and sexual harassment of Lamed Yod, then an 18-year-old National Service volunteer at Beit Hanassi.
Lamed Yod complained that Katsav made sexual comments and kissed her on her neck without permission, but later changed her testimony. However, her father testified that Lamed Yod came home from her service upset because of the way the former president treated her, and a driver at Beit Hanassi also saw her leave the president's office upset.
The court said Aleph's testimony is backed up by evidence.
Katsav's sons, in the courtroom, shouted "it's not true, it's not true!"
The court said that Katsav and Aleph did not have an affair or any romantic connection, and that the former president did not have an alibi or witnesses to support his claims.
The judges said that the women accusing Katsav said that the former president forced them to write him love letters, thus fabricating evidence that would show he did not rape them.
In addition, Katsav was charged with obstruction of justice.
...
A key moment in the affair took place in August 2008, when Katsav reneged on a plea bargain signed with the State Attorney’s Office in order to have the chance to prove his innocence in court.
The deal, which would have seen Katsav plead guilty to two charges of sexual harassment – but not the rape charges – sent 20,000 people out into the streets of Tel Aviv in protest.
In March 2009, then attorney-general Menachem Mazuz filed the indictment against Katsav. It graphically described the former president’s alleged crimes and painted him as a sexual predator. His trial began in May last year.
“I am here today by choice; I depart today on a long, difficult, journey to battle for my innocence. Here it is no longer a mock trial, here they won’t determine my case without seeing me, without hearing me, without reading all the investigation materials… I am embarking on a long and difficult battle to clear my name, and I promise once again that I will emerge innocent,” said Katsav at the start of his trial.
Apparently, he is not innocent. 'Israel's first religious President' (it was he who had a synagogue built on the premises of the President's residence) is nothing but a sexual predator - and a desecration of God's name. He is a disgrace.
The picture is of Katzav's January 2009 'news conference' in which he harangued everyone involved in his case for three hours.
I am an Orthodox Jew - some would even call me 'ultra-Orthodox.' Born in Boston, I was a corporate and securities attorney in New York City for seven years before making aliya to Israel in 1991 (I don't look it but I really am that old :-). I have been happily married to the same woman for thirty-five years, and we have eight children (bli ayin hara) ranging in age from 13 to 33 years and nine grandchildren. Four of our children are married! Before I started blogging I was a heavy contributor on a number of email lists and ran an email list called the Matzav from 2000-2004. You can contact me at: IsraelMatzav at gmail dot com
