Updates on Malka Leifer and JCW

 

I have an upcoming post in the works that is going to relate to the ongoing saga of Mrs. Malka Leifer and the role of the organization Jewish Community Watch (JCW). Hence, I thought it's a good idea to update my readers on the latest status of the Malka Leifer trial and the status of JCW. In my initial draft of the upcoming post, I included the updates as a part of it. This made the post too “bulky” and interfered with the flow. I decided to cut out the updates and to present them here as a stand-alone preliminary post.

Here are the updates:

 

Update on Malka Leifer Episode

My last post on this saga was posted on Sept. 19, 2022. It is probably one of the most comprehensive posts on the topic that I have written. If you are not acquainted with the case, it is well worth reading.

At the time, the only current update that I was able to present was that the trial had been rescheduled to begin on Feb. 7, 2023. Sure enough, the trial indeed commenced around that date which was about five weeks ago from this writing. At that time, several news outlets revived the episode and reported on the “opening volleys” of the trial. Click HERE for one example.

Since then, the trial was held in closed court for three weeks. There are some new articles over the past week which tell us the trial is back in open court. The court is hearing from the supporting cast (other teachers, Dassi’s ex-husband, etc.). These characters are officially giving the same testimonies that they gave in the committal hearing in Sept of 2021. I reported on it in this post from Oct. 13, 2021.

The amazing thing is that the extradition was based on an indictment of 74 charges. When Mrs. Leifer arrived back in Australia, 4 counts were dropped and 20 new ones were added to inflate the rap sheet to 90 charges. Yet, almost all of the current articles are claiming that she is standing trial for only 29 charges. How and why did 61 charges suddenly evaporate?

In a very recent development on March 6, the judge announced that two of the remaining 29 counts must be deemed not guilty for technical reasons. Apparently, these two charges relied on a law that was first implemented in the year 2006. For the charges to stick, it would need to be proven beyond a reasonable doubt that the offences occurred after 2006 implementation. Apparently, there is no such proof, so these two charges were officially dismissed. Now only 27 remain. While I am happy to see two of the charges dismissed, this update tells us something very disturbing about the remaining 27 charges and about the secular court system in general on two accounts. 

For one thing, these two charges were dropped because it could not be established that the alleged offenses occurred after the implementation. If that could be established, it would suffice. There would then be no additional requirement to establish an exact date and time.

This tells us that all of the 27 charges can be considered valid even if not a single one of them can be attributed to a specific date or time. In Jewish law, such a charge in a criminal case is automatically invalid because, for lack of a date, the accused has no opportunity to disprove the claim with an alibi. We call this  עדות שאי אתה יכול להזימה - testimony that cannot be refuted. 

Alas, our Western democratic world doesn't need to establish dates for criminal offenses. This infringes on any accused person's ability to defend themselves. This is one of many things to think about before praising the system.

The second disturbing point about this is that, in today's world, what defines a criminal is not what one does, but when they do it. These charges were dropped because, due to the fact that they were based on a new law that only took effect in 2006, this alleged event only became a crime in 2006. Before then, this same event wasn't [yet] a crime! 

There are new laws and mandates being created all the time. Tax mandates, insurance mandates, mandated reporting, mask mandates and vax mandates. Yesterday, it was a mitzva to go out and smile at everyone. All of a sudden it is a crime to go outside without covering your mouth. One can get fined for it. Before Prohibition, buying or drinking a beer was a-okay. During Prohibition it suddenly becomes a crime. After Prohibition, it's a-okay again. For all my years, buying, selling, or smoking marijuana was a crime. Now, it's all perfectly legal.

We live in a world where the rules of dating, mating and child-rearing have changed wherein anything that can be remotely considered aggressive or uninvited has turned into a felony. This is even though, "This is the way it was always done where I come from."

It's a lot like when my father (LOY"T) grew up in Munkatch. When he was born, he was living in a little house in Czechoslovakia. All of a sudden, in 1938, he's living in the same little house but it's in Hungary. Today, the same little house is in the Ukraine. The house didn't move. The borders did.

Back to the story. The prosecution officially closed its case on March 9 and it seems the defense may have done so a day later. I suppose that this means the case will be given to the jury over the coming week. From the news reports, the defense claims that they caught Elly Sapper in blatant lies and that, collectively, the accusers used the term, “I don’t recall” or “I have no recollection” over 400 times.

It must be noted that Mrs. Leifer continues to maintain full innocence. This means that all legal and Halachic principles of presumption of innocence are in effect. I want to remind readers who are skeptical and/or dismissive of claims of innocence that presumption of innocence works on two levels:

• Total innocence, i.e., nothing at all happened and all the accusations are fabricated.
  
  
• Innocence of degree, i.e., the accused may not be totally innocent, but may very well be not nearly as guilty as the accusers are making it out.

I have mentioned in the past that I personally perceive a reglayim l’davar that some degree of inappropriate activity took place. However, there is absolutely no reglayim l’davar that the activities were as extreme as they are being made out. As such, even if Level One (Total Innocence) seems far-fetched, Level Two is exceedingly probable. This is for the following reasons:

• As a rule, just telling the story exactly as it transpired does not have enough “mustard” to bring the desired results. This itself is an incentive to embellish the details. Especially when there is nobody who can refute them (save the accused). I wrote about this HERE.
  
  
• In the claims and affidavits of the defamation suit which I will discuss in the upcoming post, the Sapper sisters – and particularly Dassi Erlich - took the liberty to twist my words and to distort numerous facts. Once they actually did it in their suit against me, there is no reason they are not doing it in their accusations against Mrs. Leifer.
  
  
• We also now have official testimony from Dassi Erlich’s ex-husband that it is his impression that the ordeal was taken out of proportion.

In any case, the trial is all but finished and there will likely be a verdict in a week or two. 

Update on Jewish Community Watch

If I am not mistaken, the very first time I wrote about JCW as an organization was in this post in July of 2018. At that time, I wrote, “Jewish Community Watch is a boiler room operation with a very impressive website.” At that time, there was much to criticize them about, as is elaborated in that post. Indeed, everything I mentioned was factual without any exaggerations. The facts were easily verified and irrefutable. And in case anyone wanted to refute me head-on, my comments section and personal email were open and available.

No such refutation ever happened.

My criticisms in that post were exclusively about how they do not conduct themselves in accordance with Shulchan Aruch despite claiming to have Rabbinic guidance. That post made no mention of legal violations.

In two subsequent posts (HERE and HERE) I noted that, in addition to their Halachic misbehavior, they are not exactly legal. They are flouting Israeli law since most of their activities were being carried out in Israel by proxy and they were not registered to legally operate in Israel. These facts were likewise never refuted.

Finally, in a more recent post, dated Feb 26, 2022 (just one year ago), I noted that their iniquities brought about their dissolution. Here is what I wrote:

Around April 2021 [Note- After reviewing my records, I now believe this occurred on April 1, 2020], 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.

Yes, since what I now believe to be April 2020, JCW ceased all operations. They removed the Staff page from their website and went into hibernation. For almost three years, their website just sat there doing absolutely nothing. No new faces added to their Wall of Shame, no events, no updates. They did white out three WOS entries because, presumably, these three folks had died. I believe several others have also since died, but no other entry was removed. Their link to a donation portal yielded a domain name for sale.

They were totally inactive and presumed dead.

As such, I was totally shocked to discover on the last week of February 2023 (just about two weeks ago), that JCW took on a new webhost and rejuvenated their website. The new website is published by OS Solutions which appears to be a part Brooklyn and part India based outsourcing company. From LinkedIn it appears that the president is an observant Jew who, ironically, is a native of Melbourne, Australia.

The new website is solely cosmetic. It is exactly the same as the old website with a fresh new look. It solicits donations by snail mail or by telephone, but without any online portal. The three whited-out entries on their Wall of Shame are now totally gone but there are no other additions or deletions. Moreover, they still have no Staff page. Aside from that, virtually all the content is the same, even the typos from the old version.

There is one more thing missing. We will discuss this in the next post.

All told, JCW seems to have invested some money to give it a new look, yet it still looks to be as dead and inactive as always. There is nothing new on this website.

This begs the question: Is JCW open for business or not?

If they are, do they have a staff or not? Where do they operate? What do they do? How much capital do they have?

If they are not active, why the sudden new-look website with a new provider?

It looks to me that they are setting themselves up for a resurrection. I am just very puzzled that, what with all the baggage they’ve carried that put them out in the first place, and their lack of staff and resources, how is such a thing possible?

I suppose time will tell.