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.
2 comments:
B"H I am writing from Melbourne Australia and I am utterly shocked at this article.This woman Leifer caused untold damage on many many innocent victims and she deserves the full force of Australian Law...she was whisked away by the Rabbonim to Israel instead of facing the courts and justice system in Australia. This is an embarrassing and shameful article for me to read and the author should do teshuvah and show some ,love and care for the victims the perpetrator deserves the full force of the law for the evil acts she committed.
B"H You know, in the Introduction of my book I describe an unfortunate class of Jews that I call "Consumers". I detailed a number of signs with which to identify a Jewish "consumer". One of which is that a Jewish consumer allows his thought process to be governed by modern Western values as opposed to genuine Jewish ones.
Well, welcome to the class.
Incidentally, the [alleged] victims were victims. But now they are accusers.
YH
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