The Malka Leifer Mesira Gang

 

I am very distressed that, about a year ago, the Israeli end of the Malka Leifer saga did not come to a happy ending. The forbidden extradition which I tried so hard to prevent was carried out nonetheless. I am at least gratified that, baruch Hashem, the affair is mostly out of the limelight, which is the way it should be. It should never have been a public issue in the first place.

All that transpired in this episode are things that nobody has anything to be proud of. Not the accused herself who I will assume is not totally innocent (although I claimed she is not as guilty as she is being made out to be), not the accusers, not their supporters and activists, and not the Israeli government and judiciary.

I personally believe that any Jewish person who had any role in promoting and carrying out the extradition - which was unmitigated mesira l’akum - should wear a badge of shame. To a large degree or a small degree, depending on their role, they are gulity of mesira as well as lo tasgir, gonev nefesh m’Yisrael, numerous other transgressions and, worst of all, chillul Hashem.

Certainly, for any of these people who had an active or vocal part in the extradition, to carry it around as a badge of honor is a further perpetuation of a tremendous chillul Hashem.

The saga is still not over as part two is currently being played out in Australia, yet the fallout from part one has been quite devastating.  I could compile a long list of “korbanos” (and I don’t mean the accusers), but there is one that I really want to focus on. The demise of JCW - Jewish Community Watch.

JCW, with Shana Aaronson at its helm, worked tirelessly to spend a lot of their donors’ money to carry out this mesira. But by the time it was done, JCW was not the same. Currently they are nothing but an inactive web site.

What brought this about?

Although JCW may have been born out of a sincere desire to alleviate the scourge of sexual abuse in the Jewish community, their methods were never fully sincere. I described their iniquities in detail in these posts (HERE, HERE, and HERE).

To summarize, JCW lost sight of the fact that, as menacing and detestable as Jewish sexual offenders may be, they are still Jews and must be treated as such. As Rav Elyashiv, ZTL, wrote (not in these exact words), every suspect and every case needs to be examined under a microscope: there are active threats and non-active threats, there are fixable people and non-fixable people, there are violent perps and non-violent perps, there are young immature offenders who can grow out of it and older hardened offenders who cannot, etc. We cannot put all offenders into one basket. Yet, from the lack of distinction in their Wall of Shame and their lead message, it is clear that JCW could not acknowledge this, nor could they care.

As far as guidance is concerned, either the Rabbinic advisory staff they claimed to have was not put to use or it led them astray. And they never even claimed to have any Rabbinic guidance in Eretz Yisrael.

As I wrote in this post, the offenders are all Jews and as such, as much as we may detest them we still have to want what is ultimately best for them, not what is the worst for them. Our goal must be protection and prevention for the public, but not punishment.

As I wrote, JCW’s primary focus was not helping the victims, although they were into that as well. It was mainly to catch and prosecute and to shame offenders. For this they did not need a team of psychologists and social workers but a “task force” of vigilantes.

In the United States, JCW did not have such a task force. As such, JCW only served as a bulletin board to display the names and faces (or silhouettes) of their list of “bad guys” for public consumption, and a phone number for victims to call for help and referrals. Most of their action work of catching and prosecuting (and extraditing) bad guys was really taking place in Israel.

But they had a problem, they never bothered to register themselves as a legal NPO (Amuta) in Israel.

Enter Magen Child Services.

Magen Child Services was founded in 2010 to do much of the same work as JCW. Only they were not foolish enough to maintain a Wall of Shame. Still, Magen became defunct circa 2015, I am not sure why. Nevertheless, they retained their NPO registration. In 2018, JCW merged with the defunct Magen to enable JCW to operate in Israel. Magen adopted JCW’s name in its Hebrew version and now called itself Magen Lekehilot Heyehudiyot (Magen for Jewish Communities). Shana Aaronson, who was listed as the Israel Chief Operating Officer at JCW was simultaneously the manager of Magen - which was one and the same for three years - even though, to this day, she is not and never was a board member.

Around April 2021, Shana and the entire Israeli staff of the JCW/Magen alliance broke away to make Magen independent. As a result, JCW ceased all operations. Ironically, now Magen is active and JCW is defunct.

I cannot claim to know with certainty what caused the breakup. Yet, my gut instinct plus some little “tidbits” of inside information that I have gathered, lead me to believe that the internal backlash from the Malka Leifer episode had a lot to do with it.

So now, we have the current resurrected Magen for Jewish Communities which teamed up with Lo Tishtok (an ex-Amuta) to be the current Israeli successor to JCW. They have built up a formidable staff, including many of the old JCW group, and invested into a state-of-the-art web site and they have their phone lines and their services. This seems to include advocacy services, victim support services, and awareness (educational) services. Looks like they are open for business and thriving.

Bracha v’hatzlacha!

But, what are their chances for success?

I’ll tell you right now - it all depends on if they learned from their mistakes.

For one thing, thank Goodness, they officially do not have any shameful Wall of Shame - although they unofficially have one right HERE. Also, on the administrative end, there are several improvements. They are a totally legal Israeli amuta - Amuta number 580528230 - they claim financial transparency and they present a phone number and even a quasi-address (perhaps it’s a PO box number but there is no street called Givat Sharet). They display their staff members and board members. They seem to have everything they should have. Except...except...

Well, I’m just getting to that...

The issue is not on how they play defense. They probably do an excellent job in helping and supporting victims. The question is on how they play "offense", which is, once again, how do they deal with the alleged miscreants?

I was hoping that by now they graduated to taking the Rav Elyashiv approach, which is to take a tough stand when you must do so and a much softer stand when you mustn’t. Actually, after the previous incarnation of Magen, one of the founding mothers, Mrs. Miriam Friedman, wrote (Dec. 2016) about a program called COSA which, she wrote, Magen advocates. COSA works on two mottos - (a) No more victims and (b) No one is disposable. In short, as long as the [potential] victims are safe, our next job is to help helpable offenders and not to hurt them. In fact, most of them are hurt people with dark pasts of their own.

My thoughts entirely.

Sadly, the current “new improved” Magen shows no signs of following this path.

How do I know it?

I know it from a very recent blog article that was published in Times of Israel on February 17, 2022. This article was written by a woman named Rachael Risby-Raz and it is titled The Malka Leifer Court Gang.

(Interestingly, Ms. Risby-Raz who is so proud about her participation in prosecuting Mrs. Leifer for female-to-female horsing around on nothing more than the say-so of the accusers, was very quick to defend ex-PM Ehud Olmert on a similar charge of male-to-female - i.e., true sexual - harassment. In the Olmert case, the accuser claimed she told people at the time of the incident. She also claimed there were two other victims who messaged her about being harassed by Olmert. Yet, Risby-Raz, who incidentally was indicted for corruption together with Olmert, said that this couldn't be true because he respects women and is "not that kind of person".

The Australian-born Risby-Raz, who is so much in favor of extraditing Jews outside of Eretz Yisrael said publicly in 2010 she was "sorry I immigrated to Israel" and immediately afterward burst out crying. Well, then, why wasn't she deported?)

This blog post is primarily a fundraising appeal for Magen for Jewish Communities trying to convince us to give them lots of money because of all the wonderful things they do.

Indeed, she does present an overview of all of the activities of Magen - “providing education, awareness, mental health support, advocacy, and investigations around sexual abuse and its effect on individuals, families and communities” - which are all very nice. But she builds the post around the incident that “pulled” her into the cause - the high-profile Malka Leifer extradition saga.

Yes, indeed. The great chillul Hashem. The great mesira, lo tasgir, gonev nefesh m’Yisrael episode which has caused a lot of damage and hasn’t helped a single person.

She rightly refers to all the activist perpetrators as “the gang” and so wrongly flaunts this debacle as some kind of badge of honor. And who does she name as the main hero of this extradition expedition? Need I say it?

Shana Aaronson.

Two statements that Ms. Risby-Raz wrote made a deep impression upon me. I will quote the second one first:

Shana was the one who “found” Malka Leifer after she had been released feigning mental incapacity, brought the police back in to the picture and got Leifer back in to court and on her way to extradition to Australia.

This says that, according to my assessment that the Leifer incident meets all the criteria of Choshen Mishpat 388:9 and is therefore a bona fide case of mesira l’akum, that Shana Aaronson is the moser[et] par excellence. And all the rest of her “gang” are her partners and associates. See Targum Yonasan Shmos 20:13.

Of course, none of this should not come at any surprise. On the new Magen website there is a section of Magen in the News where it lists five twenty news articles. All of the articles involve alleged Ultra-Orthodox miscreants with eighteen out of twenty concerning Mrs. Leifer and her extradition. (Can you imagine? Eighteen out of twenty news items about a single person who is at most guilty of  מעשה ארץ מצרים and only two articles about miscreants who are alleged to have engaged in actual niyuf!!!)  The YNet article from Jan. 25, 2021 is the only one that doesn’t quote Shana by name but releases a statement from “Magen”:

The Magen Association for the Protection of Children, which has been aiding Leifer’s alleged victims, also welcomed the extradition.

So as a matter of policy, Magen is in favor of extraditing Jews out of Israel into the hands of the “akum”. They continue:

 

"We stand by the victims and encourage them ahead of the next fight within the Australian justice system… We will fight with all our might so that Israel ceases to be a refuge for sex offenders and that a similar extradition saga will not be repeated.”

In case you didn’t understand the closing line, it means they hope that the next extradition of a Jew outside of Eretz Yisrael (lo tasgir) to the hands of the non-Jews (mesira l’akum) should transpire without any resistance.

Well, I have very surprising news for those who “will fight with all our might so that Israel ceases to be a refuge for sex offenders”. Our Halacha thinks differently. It is quite accepting of all types of “offenders” to get a new chapter in Eretz Yisrael. This is clearly stated in Makkos 7a (codified in Rambam Hilchos Sanhedrin 13:8):

Rabi Yehuda ben Dustai says in the name of Shimon ben Shatach - One [convicted felon] who flees from Eretz Israel to chu”l we do not overturn his conviction. One who flees from chu”l to Eretz Israel, we overturn his conviction [and retry his case] because of the merit of Eretz Israel.

Sorry about that.

It is unfortunate that sex offenders do exist among our numbers. But this is our lot. Our lot. And, when necessary, they should be prosecuted for the sake of prevention. But what more appropriate place to do it than here in our “Jewish” country? What hetter do we have to export our miscreants to chu”l to the hands of un-Halachic non-Jewish “justice” (which is nothing of the kind)?

So we have now exposed Magen’s - i.e., Shana Aaronson’s - policies about extradition and mesira to non-Jews: The sooner the better.

It’s JCW all over again. And why?

Let’s go back to Ms. Risby-Raz’s article and check out the earlier statement that caught my fancy:

The gang didn’t really have a leader, 

What does it mean that they didn’t really have a leader?

It means they didn’t really have any guidance.

It means that they were just a group of inflamed fanatics bent on ridding our communities from any type of miscreant and doing it their way. Not necessarily the right way.

They had no mentor, no sagacious Torah scholar or Beit Din to tell them what they may do and what they may not do. No objective leadership. No head.

עשה לך רב והסתלק מן הספק.

A group without a head cannot think because it has no head to think with. Only a boich - a gut. And this is how it makes its decisions - gut reactions.

Let's go back to the new improved Magen and their web site. Yes, they have a hotline and a staff and a board and a terrific lineup of services. So, what don’t they have (at least not on display)?

Oversight.

They don’t have: Rabbinic endorsements. An intrinsic Rabbinical advisory staff. A full-time connection to an objective and G-d fearing Beis Din. Objective so as not to be dominated by raw sensitivities and emotions but nevertheless fully accessible and responsible for overseeing the steps Magen takes when dealing with suspected or accused miscreants.

Magen may have a heart and a soul, but they don’t have a head. Sure, they have Rabbi Blau to make it look Jewish but so does JCW. Shana is a crusader for closure and “justice”, but this comes at the expense of level-headedness, yashrut, and the laws of our Torah. She is nobody’s Rabbi. And there is no indication that in her eyes a Jewish offender is still Jewish. As long as there is no objective body for “checks and balances”, Magen stands to become another totalitarian dictatorship as was JCW.

Shana does a lot of good work and has helped many unfortunate people. She may have a good deal to brag about and for which to be supported. Yet, her role in the Leifer affair and her moser status is not one of them.

Ms. Risby-Raz is barking up the wrong tree. If someone wants to sell Magen to potential supporters, it is advisable to do so on the wings of helping victims, not on how it treats offenders (real or imagined). There may be some excellent reasons to throw one's support behind Magen, but as long as they have Shana Aaronson and her emotion-laden, anti-Torah policies of mesira, extradition, and chillul Hashem at the “head” of the posse, they are just ridin' down the same ol’ dusty trail.

 

החפץ לה' בעלות וזבחים כשמוע בקול ה'? הנה שמע מזבח טוב להקשיב מחלב אילים.