Israeli leaderships sex crime problem

A protest against violence against women in Tel Aviv, March

2014.Yotam RonenActiveStills
David Sheen-9 December 2016
The Israeli army officially inaugurated its new chief rabbi at the
beginning of this month but not before he issued a sworn
statement apologizing for past religious rulings that have been
roundly criticized as sexist.
Eyal Krim, who has served as the armys second-highest-ranking
religious official for the last four years, was elevated to the rank of
brigadier general after Israels high court ruled that the
appointment could be allowed.

Krim was to have taken up his post a week previous, but his
inauguration was delayed by the court. The order to delay was
made after parliamentarians from Meretz, a left-leaning Zionist
party, petitioned the high court against his appointment. The
petition focused on how Krim had sanctioned the rape of nonJewish women by Jewish soldiers in 2002.
Every rabbi, educator or public figure is required to have the
ability to retract and to admit a mistake. I do not hesitate to say I
erred, Krim wrote in his affidavit.
Krim made the controversial religious rulings when he was a
civilian, publishing them on Kipa.co.il, a Hebrew-language web
forum popular with Orthodox Jews.
Yair Ettinger, religion reporter for Tel
Aviv newspaper Haaretz, wrote recently that although he was not
in active service at the time, Krim became in civilian clothes the
leading address to turn to for religious soldiers, especially ones in
combat units, with questions and dilemmas regarding halakha, or
Jewish religious law. His popularity among religious soldiers
overshadowed that of the rabbis of the military rabbinate and
annoyed them very much.
Evil urge
Krims most misogynistic ruling was in response to the following
question by an anonymous man: Is it allowed nowadays for an
IDF [Israeli army] soldier, for example, to rape girls during battle,
or is such a thing forbidden?
In response, Krim ruled: Even though fraternizing with a gentile
woman is a very serious matter, it was permitted during wartime
the Torah permitted the individual to satisfy the evil urge.
In the days that followed the November court decision to delay
Krims appointment, many of Israels political and religious
leaders issued statements of support for Krim, urging him not to
retract his earlier religious rulings. Hundreds of rabbis on the
government payroll publicly expressed their support for Krim,

including more than 150 military rabbis and Israels national chief
rabbi Yitzhak Yosef.
Even Tzohar, a group of ostensibly liberal Orthodox rabbis, spoke
out in Krims defense, as did several ministers, including justice
minister Ayelet Shaked and religious services minister David
Azoulay.
Last month, Haaretz reported that sexual harassment complaints
in the military nearly doubled between 2010 and 2015.
Ironically, the army official to sound the alarm over the steady
increase in sex crime complaints, its head of human resources,
Major General Hagai Topolanski, is also the very official to
have approved Krim for the position of chief rabbi, despite his
previously reported comments about raping non-Jewish women.
In recent days, it has emerged that a retired Israeli army brigadier
general charged with 16 sex crimes, including three counts of
rape, would likely receive a suspended sentence and avoid any
prison time. The officer, Ofek Buchris, is expected to draw his
entire pension, since he resigned from the army immediately after
the rape indictments and before his guilt was established.
Light sentencing
Israels aversion to aggressively prosecuting soldiers for rape also
extends to crimes committed before they are inducted into the
army.
In August, the news website Walla reported that a 24-year-old
man who had just been charged with rape, had also been charged
with attempted rape four years earlier.
In that 2012 incident, however, the presiding judge chose not to
jail him for the crime, instead putting him on probation and only
fining him the equivalent of $1,300, so that his police record
would not be tarred by a felony conviction, as this could have
torpedoed his then-impending army enlistment.

Many more disturbing cases of sex crimes, and institutional efforts

to downplay them, have come to the fore in Israel over the past
few months.
On 4 December, a retired Israeli judge confessed to sexually
harassing a female employee. Yitzhak Cohen, who served as the
president of a Nazareth district court, is likely to duck a criminal
conviction, and receive only a light sentence of community
service and a $650 fine.
In September, Nissim Mor was convicted on charges of sexual
harassment, committed while he was Israels deputy police chief.
Although the former top cop has confessed to the crimes,
his punishment may amount to only a few months of community
service, and the presiding judge may yet decide to annul the
guilty conviction altogether, according to Haaretz.
Mors abuse of his police powers to commit sex attacks on a
woman who had come to him asking for aid would seem to be
symptomatic of a wider phenomenon. In August, Walla reported
on a perceptible pattern of women approaching the Israeli police
to complain about crimes, including sexual harassment, and being
in turn sexually harassed by those very policemen.
Since he was sworn in as Israels police chief a year ago, Roni
Alsheikh has done little to assuage concerns that the force does
not take sex crimes seriously. A report released last month
revealed that 87 percent of alleged sex crimes are not
prosecuted by the police.
At an event marking International Womens Day in March,
Alsheikh announced that the police would no longer investigate
anonymous allegations of sex crimes.
The announcement was made even though Israeli law compels all
employers to investigate any suspicion of sex crimes, even if the
allegations are made anonymously. Alsheikh had previously said
that he regarded allegations made anonymously to be as bad as
sexual harassment itself.

In August, Haaretz reported that Alsheikh and his direct boss,

public security minister Gilad Erdan, had ordered police
spokespersons to refrain from speaking to the media about rape
and other sex crimes in order to improve the public image of the
force. Instead, they were instructed to focus media attention on
crimes allegedly committed by Palestinians both those who
have, and those who do not have, Israeli citizenship.
The following month, Haaretz reported that Alsheikh formed a
committee to consider setting up a legal aid fundfor police officers
accused of sex crimes and other infractions.
Plague
Outside of the army, rape culture continues to plague Israeli
society.
Last month, it emerged that Israels biggest bank, Bank Hapoalim,
paid $1.6 million to an employee who accused the banks CEO,
Zion Kenan, of sexually assaulting her. Hapoalim is currently
under investigation by the Bank of Israel for not reporting the
incident.
Also last month, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev decided not
to suspend or levy any fine against David Newman, dean of the
faculty of humanities and social sciences, for sexually harassing a
female student in his department. The university tried to prevent
news of the decision from reaching the public.
In the past few days, a court convicted David Yosef of 11 sex
crimes, including indecent acts, sexual harassment and sexual
assault, all committed while he served as mayor of the Tel Aviv
suburb of Or Yehuda. During Israels large-scale attack on Gaza in
the summer of 2014, the Or Yehuda municipality hung a large
banner in public urging Israeli soldiers to strike Palestinians
forcefully, using a Hebrew-language double entendre that alluded
to raping Palestinian mothers. Yosef was mayor at the time.
A popular religious leader accused of raping and sexually
assaulting women and minors was convicted of lesser

crimes recently. Eliezer Berland, the rabbi in question, was

sentenced to just a year and a half in jail and a $6,500 fine. When
Berland was first arraigned in July, after evading arrest for three
years, a thousand of his followers protested outside the Israeli
court, holding signs bearing the slogan: The people are with the
saint.
Of late, there has been a string of sex crime allegations against
lawmakers from Israels national religious camp and its political
party, the far-right Habayit Hayehudi (Jewish Home).
In September, it emerged that Davidi Perl, the regional council
chair of a cluster of Israeli settlements in the occupied West
Bank, agreed to pay a large sum of money (reportedly more than
$50,000) to a young woman who accused him of sexual assault.
The council voted to retain Perl as its chair. Perl resigned two
week later for, in his words, the good of my family.
An unnamed elected representative with Habayit Hayehudi has
been accused by a party member of numerous sex attacks.
Meanwhile, Yinon Magal, a former Habayit Hayehudi lawmaker
who resigned from Israels parliament a year ago after numerous
women accused him of sex crimes, was hired by Israel Channel 10
last month to co-host a popular late-night television show.
Natasha Roth, a blogger with +972 Magazine, observed that
Magals fate contrasted with that of Billy Bush.
Bush, a cousin of George W. Bush, the former US president, was
ousted in October from his job as host of the NBC television
show Today after a video of him entertaining Donald
Trumps boasts about sexually assaulting women was made public
during the US presidential election campaign.
While Trumps misogynistic comments were widely condemned,
Tzvika Brot, his election campaign manager in Israel, tried
to whitewash his violent sexism. Brot noted somewhat ironically

in light of the controversy surrounding Krims appointment that

Trump isnt running for chief rabbi.
Prime ministers office
Israels highest political office also appears to be no safe space for
women.
In April, David Keyes, spokesperson to Israels Prime
Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, was accused of sexually assaulting
a woman in 2013.
In a separate case, last month, after a woman working in the
prime ministers office complained to her direct boss that another
office employee had sexually harassed her, the boss fired her on
the spot.
Netanyahus close friend and former chief of staff, diplomat Gil
Sheffer, was this month placed under house arrest after a woman
accused him of confining and sexually assaulting her. Sheffer has
faced similar accusations from other women in the recent past.
Another previous chief of staff to Netanyahu, Natan Eshel,
also quit his post after a colleague accused him of sex crimes.
In September, Netanyahus former chauffeur, Ilan Shmuel, was
convicted of raping six girls between the ages of nine and 16 over
the course of a decade.
When the head of Israels government fails to adequately protect
women from sex criminals even in his own inner circle, it is sad
but not surprising when Israeli children, even pre-pubescent ones,
fall victim to sexual predators, such as in the Shmuel case.
That liberal Zionist lawmakers successfully forced the armys chief
rabbi to express contrition for his past sanctioning of rape can be
counted as a narrow victory for feminist activists. But Krims
elevation to such a powerful post to begin with, and the strong
support he continues to receive from Israeli leaders, are
testaments to the power of patriarchy in Israeli society.

David Sheen is an independent writer and filmmaker.

Posted by Thavam