In Bad Faith 4-b: Inverted Narrative-Part 2 - Hateful Blogs

 

This post is Part 2 of a 2 part post about my personal mention in Dassi Erlich's book. Please see Part 1 HERE. If you are not up to date on this episode you can see the earlier posts HERE. It is also helpful to see this post - Irreversible Damage.

For those just tuning in, I am continuing my response to a very malicious paragraph written by Dassi Erlich in bad faith in her widely acclaimed tome, In Bad Faith.

Let us review the entire paragraph on page 300:

But no matter where I turned, I couldn’t escape the looming presence of the court or the relentless attacks from Malka Leifer’s supporters. There was constant trolling of our social media pages and hateful blogs labelled us monsters and accused us of selling our souls for revenge, asserting that we were no longer human beings but predators. I sought support from Shana Aaronson of Jewish Community Watch to deal with it. Shana was unwavering and helped uncover the identity of some of the most hateful. A court in Israel instructed that the defamatory posts be removed and at the time they were, but since then more posts have been made.

In my previous post, we discussed the hypocritical nature of Dassi’s claim to “relentless attacks”. I acknowledged that the bogus “relentless attacks” that she is complaining about may be the work of multiple people and not specifically me. However, when she refers to “hateful blogs” (likewise hypocritical), there are no other candidates. She is referring to me.

Basically, I only have one blog. This is where I have written about 50 posts on this sordid episode since 2016. The terms Dassi is paraphrasing never appeared on my blog. It can be argued that I also have a largely neglected Facebook page which technically meets the definition of a web log, i.e., a “blog”. But it’s not really known as my “blog”. 

Incidentally, Dassi’s Facebook page is just as much a blog. If it’s on the web and it’s a log – a chronological journal – then it’s a web log, or a “blog”. And, along with all its relentless attacks, it is the most hateful blog I have ever seen.

I strongly object to my blog[s] being referred to as “hateful”. “Hateful” is not a synonym for “critical” or even for “antagonistic”, which means opposing. “Hateful” means something else.

The term “hateful” has a definition. It is not arbitrary. The definition of “hateful” is one who wishes bad on a second person, such as death, disease, or divorce, poverty, privation or prison. If you want bad things to happen to Joe or to Jane, that means that you hate Joe or Jane. No sugarcoating.

You will not find this hatred in any of my blog[s]. Only in Dassi’s. So, here in her book, Dassi is trying to pin her personal hatred on me. I think this is a very hateful, perfidious, and despicable thing to do.

I was not silent about this. I wrote an email to Dassi and to her publisher about two days after the previous one. Here is the email:

To Dassi Erlich, Ms. Ellen Whinnett, and the worthy publishers at Hachette Australia Books,

The lack of response to my previous email and the fact that, in all this time, I haven’t found any blogs that meet your descriptions, force me to conclude that all the references in the passage on page 300 are referring to my own blog.

As you are aware, but continue to deny, my blog is very principled and adheres to those principles. Some of them are:

 

·         Presumption of innocence for all accused people

·         Full adherence to Halacha and Jewish values

·         Disdain for retribution and revenge

·         Compassion for all involved parties

In my recent post Irreversible Damage, I demonstrated how you and your supporters constantly reject and violate these principles and maintain contrary ones.

There is no debate that my blog is exceedingly critical of your damaging principles and that it is not subtle in saying so, but I must take exception to your describing it as “hateful”. It may be called “harsh” or “unkind”, but it is not hateful. I refuse to allow you to project your own hatefulness to those you write about, upon me.

If you maintain that my blog can be called hateful, I insist that you provide me with true, unadulterated examples, with full accurate context instead of distorted excerpts, and explain why it is not justifiable criticism considering my principles (or, what is wrong with my principles).

Until then, I demand a formal apology.

 

Very sincerely yours,

 

Yechezkel Hirshman

Owner and author at Achas L'Maala Blog

Needless to say, to date, I received no response at all to this letter and certainly no apology.

Just like I wrote about the “relentless attacks” in my previous post, Dassi is setting the definitions with her terminology. 

In my earlier post (In Bad Faith 3), I wrote how “hateful” my blog really is. I was quoting my epic 2017 post Judging the Judges II. This is what I wrote:

Because, as I wrote way earlier, contrary to all appearances, I really do have a lot of ahavas Yisroel. I don’t want to see Malka Leifer destroyed and I don’t want to see Dassi Erlich destroyed. There is no need for it. As far as I know, they are both victims. I think it's a better idea to try to fix wounded people than to try to break them. But I have yet to hear a single voice echo mine!

I never wanted anything bad for Dassi. Doubtless, I did not want her to succeed in her efforts to harm Mrs. Leifer. I, and many of the Rabbanim involved in this case, recognize that there is more than one human being in this story and that the current aggressor is not Mrs. Leifer but Dassi Erlich. Dassi refuses to acknowledge that, in her battle against Mrs. Leifer, I wasn’t on anybody’s side. If anything, I stand on the side of the Charedi community when it is being attacked and maligned. This is my mandate in One Above and Seven Below. 

Sadly, Dassi also refuses to acknowledge that Mrs. Leifer is a human being. She is a “monster”. That’s how she wants to deal with her and that is how she wants her to be dealt with. And she encourages all of her echo chamber followers to play along. 

This is very hateful.

And so, as I display in my second email above, to date, nobody has been able to produce anything in my blog that indicates that I do not want what is best for Dassi Erlich. It is just that Dassi is too narcissistic to see it. Dassi went out of her way to team up with Shana Aaronson to make fun of my statement that I don’t want to see anyone destroyed. It’s the only way they can try to justify themselves for the hateful actions they took and the hateful words against me in this paragraph. 

In this paragraph, Dassi attempts to illustrate her false assertion by paraphrasing some terms that do not appear on my regular blog, although she claims that it does. She wrote:

...and hateful blogs labelled us monsters and accused us of selling our souls for revenge, asserting that we were no longer human beings but predators.

Once again, Dassi uses her skill of dishonesty by telling only half the story as well as changing some details. Dassi is referring to an open letter that was addressed to her sister, Nicole Meyer, that I posted on my Facebook page. Yes, I did employ the term monster in relation to Nicole Meyer and there was very harsh criticism for what she was doing. It was all done in context.

So, what was Nicole doing? Why did I use this terminology? What is the context?

Dassi doesn't think her readers are entitled to know. As she did in many other parts of the book, she omits all of these "trivial" details and makes the reader think that this was a malicious remark that came uninvited and unwarranted. She presents this as if it is an unprovoked attack. Surely, Dassi, her sisters, and their lynch mob do not attack or hate anybody. It's unthinkable.

They are all nothing but pure innocent victims.

Well, to present the context, I need to reveal some actions that took place behind the scenes. I usually do not reveal things in my blog that did not happen in public, but this accusation against me plus some lies that Dassi Erlich wrote into a sworn court statement (the defamation case) create the necessity to do so.

On June 7, 2017, I received an email from necmeyer@yahoo.com.au (Nicole Meyer). The writer declined to identify herself and, at that time, I did not know the names of the Sapper sisters or that this writer was one of them. Note that she initiated this correspondence. 

She wanted to speak to me personally. Not through email, but by phone. I spent a few emails asking her who she is, what her position is – friend or foe - and why it needs to be only by phone? The only question she answered was that she claimed to have read all that I wrote until then. She refused to say where she stands on it. When I told her that I need to know her objective in this discussion, she did not answer my letter. Thus, I let it drop for the while.

Later, in November, I finally caught on that Nicole Meyer is one of the sisters. I sent her a letter to confirm it and she declined to reply. 

You can see that entire correspondence HERE:

From then, the entire episode was on ice until mid-February 2018 when Mrs. Leifer was rearrested after Shana Aaronson had a PI trail her for 200 hours. I then reopened the correspondence to Nicole with a very critical “open” letter telling her she is playing with serious Halachic prohibitions. I was surprised to get a curt response that she still wants to talk.

I replied that she refused to tell me the purpose of the conversation earlier and I need her to reassure me that her intentions are peaceful. She refused to reassure me. Though she remained evasive, I was a bit intrigued, so I agreed to call her on her phone number. I did not want to let her have my phone number so long as she would not reassure me that she will not abuse it.

Indeed, she gave me her phone number. When I was able to call, the connection was faulty. I heard her answer but she could not hear me so there was no conversation. 

You can see this correspondence HERE (I redacted the phone number):

We discussed on email about taking another opportunity to call, all the  while I was still criticizing her for her campaign. Finally, on Mar. 4, 2018, I asked if she still wants me to call her and she did not answer. I made no further attempts.

In the meanwhile, I was following Dassi’s hateful Facebook page. It was two days later on March 6, 2018 when Dassi complained about Mrs. Leifer being released on bail and the hateful comments from her lynch mob, that Nicole Meyer showed her true hateful colours. This was punctuated by the exchange that I wrote in Part 1 of this post between Shoshana and Nicole Gold where Ms. Gold pronounced that Mrs. Leifer does not deserve anything fair and that she is an evil, evil lady. 

Nicole Meyer got on to thank Ms. Gold for her relentless attack (against both Mrs. Leifer and against Shoshana). This was all in the backdrop of the relentless attacks against Rav Yitzchok Grossman who was willing to take responsibility for house arrest for Mrs. Leifer – all of it instigated by Dassi and her sisters. Dassi and Nicole couldn’t stand that Mrs. Leifer should be allowed to be confined at home with her family. Their hatefulness toward Mrs. Leifer was such that they wanted only the worst for her and her family (who were certainly innocent in all this).

It is for this blatant hatred – sinas chinam – that I told Nicole Meyer that, if you don’t believe she deserves anything fair, you are no longer acting like a human being. You have now become the monster as much as the one you are accusing. And, yes, I said that she sold her soul for revenge and that she was losing her tzelem elokim. 

Nobody ever refuted what I said or told me that I am wrong. This was an actual email sent to Nicole sent on March 14, 2018. She did not respond to this email. Note, that this was in the course of holding a very prolonged and civil one-to-one email dialog. She had every opportunity to respond, but she did not.

I decided to post this open letter on my Facebook page. This was because it was in response to what they put on their Facebook page so it is dialog on the Facebook forum. Preferably, I would have simply posted it as a comment on Dassi’s page but Dassi had long blocked me, like she has done to other dissenters. My only Facebook forum was my own page.

You can see the entire post HERE:

I just need to point out that despite all the harsh criticism in this letter, which was richly deserved, even in this letter there was nothing hateful. I ended the letter with what I truly want “Please call it off”. Make peace with Mrs. Lefer and with yourselves. Just live and let live. It’s the best thing for everyone.

But, to Dassi Erlich, the best thing for everyone is “hateful”.

Incidentally, Dassi told the court in the defamation case that I refused to have a conversation with Nicole. This, even though I personally called Nicole in the faulty connection. She didn’t mention to the court that Nicole refused to reassure me that her intentions are friendly. It must have slipped her mind. This is just one of many lies and half-truths that characterizes Dassi’s story telling.

So let us go to the end of this toxic paragraph. Dassi writes:

I sought support from Shana Aaronson of Jewish Community Watch to deal with it. Shana was unwavering and helped uncover the identity of some of the most hateful. A court in Israel instructed that the defamatory posts be removed and at the time they were, but since then more posts have been made.

Once again, I cannot find any other writer that Shana slandered besides myself, so it must be me. It seems that I have now become the “most hateful”. As I wrote in my acclaimed post Victim Turned Predator, Shana Aaronson makes it her business to demonize and harm people that she doesn’t agree with. This, together with her partner in grime, Meyer Seewald, until they split in 2020.

A real grownup knows that the only legitimate way to respond to criticism is to refute it and prove the critic wrong. This is what a mature, frum, and honest person would do. Evidently, Shana and Meyer and Dassi cannot deal with my tochacha and need to act like spoiled children. If one cannot refute, one must discredit and demonize.

Hence, Shana and Meyer embarked on a campaign to find out whatever personal information they could about me and used it to harass me and my family and to publicize a very damaging and vindictive article about me on the JCW website with the intent to do harm. When they refused to remove it or to amend it, I had no choice but to take it to Israeli court (Batei Din did not want to deal with it). They had nothing of substance for defense, so they enlisted Dassi and her sisters to file a countersuit from Australia for some of the harsh, though true, criticisms in my posts. 

I must mention that Dassi never ever contacted me to complain about anything that I wrote as being untrue or to request (or demand) any corrections, so she cannot claim that her actions were out of “self-preservation” or that she was being unjustly defamed. It was done under the guidance of Shana and Meyer for money, intimidation and censorship.

I wrote about this event in my post about the Segulah of Matya ben Charash and my more recent post about Irreversible Damage.

Dassi concludes her paragraph saying that:

A court in Israel instructed that the defamatory posts be removed and at the time they were, but since then more posts have been made. (Note - there should be commas both after the word “removed” and after the word “then”. Poor grammar editing.)

The Israeli court did indeed make such an instruction but, since there was no assertion that my posts were not truthful, there were no legal grounds for this. As I wrote previously, I appealed the case. There was a good chance that it might have been overturned, but the appeals court first suggested a settlement. For whatever reasons, I opted to go with the settlement. 

Dassi writes that “since then, more posts have been made”. 

I only want to comment that also since then, a book has been published and more lies have been spread. I wish there would have been no need for any further posts, but if Dassi keeps writing hateful things and inverted narratives, and if she sticks with her habit of misrepresenting events by only telling half the story, I will need to be here to fill in the empty spaces.

After all of this, there is one more thing I want to examine about her being in bad faith. Where is G-d in all of this?

This will need to wait for my next, and hopefully, final post about Dassi’s faithless book. 

In Bad Faith 4-a: Inverted Narrative-Part 1 - Relentless Attacks

 

If you are not up to date on this topic, please see the previous posts HERE.

While following much of the pro-Hamas propaganda that is dominating the media, I learned a new expression – inverted narrative.

Initially the term was used in a chronological sense and it meant telling a story starting from the end or some other mid-point.

However, more recently, the term is used in a contextual sense to mean twisting or distorting a narrative by leaving out or undermining important details and/or by making the good guys look like bad guys and the bad guys look like good guys.

It’s another form of the [Dis]Honest Truth.

Back to Dassi Erlich’s fascinating book.

Owing to my extended involvement in the Leifer affair as an outspoken critical analyst, not to mention some actual engagement with the players behind the scenes, I would consider it an insult if none of my activities were mentioned in her book. 

On the other hand, it’s likely that I would consider it an insult if any of my activities are mentioned in the book because the only reason Dassi would want to mention any of my activities would be to insult them.

Sure enough, Dassi does not disappoint me. 

Although Dassi very wisely did not identify her subject[s] by name, I merited a dishonorable mention in a single paragraph on page 300. The full paragraph reads as follows:

But no matter where I turned, I couldn’t escape the looming presence of the court or the relentless attacks from Malka Leifer’s supporters. There was constant trolling of our social media pages and hateful blogs labelled us monsters and accused us of selling our souls for revenge, asserting that we were no longer human beings but predators. I sought support from Shana Aaronson of Jewish Community Watch to deal with it. Shana was unwavering and helped uncover the identity of some of the most hateful. A court in Israel instructed that the defamatory posts be removed and at the time they were, but since then more posts have been made.

 

This paragraph, like many other parts of the book, is an inverted narrative and it is loaded with toxins. It is exceedingly misguided, misleading, distorted and hypocritical, and I will explain why. It is also my 30 seconds of fame. 

Is this passage talking about me?

There may be multiple people me who can be erroneously called “supporters” and I gather that I am included in this group, but what’s clear is that the term “hateful blogs” is referring specifically to my blog. There are no others. Evidently, Dassi is trying to water down her fallacious accusations about my blog by falsely suggesting that there are multiple “hateful” blogs so that she can deny she is referring specifically to me. 

To test it out, I sent an email to Dassi and her publisher on June 16. The text of the email is as follows:

I received no response from Dassi Erlich. But I did indeed receive a response from one of the publishing team. She (they are all women) basically said that it is not their practice to share this information. In short, she refused to identify any other blogs. Nonetheless, the legal principle of rebuttable presumption indicates that there are no other blogs and, as such, she had no such information to share.

[I did not really require this exercise in order to confirm that my blog is the target of this passage. It was just to “ice the cake”. The point is that due to my first-hand knowledge of what she is referring to, I can clearly see the extent to which Dassi manipulates the facts and misrepresents the truth. Once I can see it here, I can safely assume that it applies to every part of her book.]

If one examines this email, it is clear that I am trying to make a few points. 

One point is to object to Dassi’s callous misuse of the term “supporters”. With this term, Dassi furtively intimates that there are people who supported the activities attributed to Mrs. Leifer. It is clear from everything I have seen both from Dassi Erlich herself (see HERE) and my own observation that there is absolutely nobody who is or was supportive of the activities alleged to Mrs. Leifer. Nobody.

Yes, there are several level-headed people like me who are supportive of Mrs. Leifer’s efforts to defend herself. We maintain the principles of presumption of innocence and of Jewish law and feel that the accusations, even if true, are being overplayed. As such, we are non-supportive of Dassi Erlich’s activities which violate these principles, yet this is not to be construed as support for Mrs. Leifer.

Dassi is projecting a very narcissistic viewpoint that anyone who does not support her illicit activities is ipso facto supporting Mrs. Leifer. As if to say, “If you are not with me, you are against me.” Dassi is not capable of fathoming that there can be virtuous people in the world that want a good outcome for all parties involved. This is immature at best and narcissistic at worst.

Another point that I am trying to make in this email is that the [mis]quotes that she attributed to my blog never appeared in my blog. She is referring to a letter in some other social media. We will discuss the significance of this later when I discuss her reference to the “hateful blog[s]”.

Before I do this, I want to discuss the relentless attacks. This expression is one of the purest examples The Subjective Adjective (and verb) that I can present.

The term “attack” is meant to denote a physical assault. One is usually attacked with a fist or a weapon or a projectile. In most cases, the one who is attacked is initiating the assault although perhaps it was provoked or done in self-defense. Typically, one who claims to be “attacked” is generally portraying themselves as somebody else’s victim. If Dassi claims to being “attacked”, she is implying that it was unjustified. She didn’t attack anybody first, or at all. She is the blameless victim.

How was she attacked? Is she referring to any “relentless” physical attacks? There is no evidence or even any claims of Dassi being physically assaulted by anybody. I certainly haven’t physically attacked her. As such, she must be using the term figuratively to refer to a verbal assault. But, by choosing this strong language, she is setting the definitions. 

Throughout this whole episode I have been a critical analyst and there is no reason to be apologetic about it. In this capacity, I poured out a lot of harsh, but legitimate, criticism over the course of my posts. All of it was in response to Dassi’s actions and/or statements. It seems that there may be additional people who have rightly criticized her, using civilized terminology (i.e., not vulgar), for doing wrong and for making a chillul Hashem. 

Usually, a verbal attack involves foul language, unfounded defamatory remarks, or hostile name calling. It does not look like she was subjected to any of this by anybody beyond the legitimate criticism. Yet, she feels justified in calling this kind of criticism “attacks”.

With this, Dassi is setting the bar. By her own new definition of “attack”, it follows that she must agree that any criticism or negative sentiments and certainly vulgarities that she – Dassi Erlich – or any of her “supporters” have expressed toward anybody constitute “attacks” just the same. Either that, or she is a narcissistic hypocrite.

Has Dassi and her lynch mob of supporters gone on the “attack”? 

Relentlessly.

Let’s begin with her book which is undoubtedly a relentless attack against her mother, Mrs. Leifer, and many members of the Adass community, as well as against me and my blog on page 300.

But, of course, long before the book, Dassi spent seven years documenting all her adventures on her dedicated Facebook page. The main purpose of the page was to provide an online journal of events, to generate a mob of supporters, and to keep them updated.

But, in the course of it all, Dassi Erlich engaged in countless “attacks” - lashon hara, motzi-shem-ra and nivul peh – and she did not lift a finger to restrain any of it or to curb all of the verbal “attacks” that she instigated from her followers. And they were relentless.

Worthy examples – 

Let us set the Wayback Machine to May 15, 2017. Here Dassi is relentlessly attacking Mrs. Leifer or what? For walking “free” in Meron on Lag B’Omer.

The alleged abuse has now been over for over 11 (eleven) years. Since then, Mrs. Leifer has not done anything remotely harmful to Dassi Erlich. She hasn’t attacked Dassi, but Dassi is now relentlessly attacking her. And she is setting her mob loose to join the fray. Some examples:

Sickening that she is allowed to roam free and not feel the consequences of how she hurt you.

 

The comment that follows that one employs the heilige “B” word. Here’s another comment:

What a disgrace!! Inhuman to allow this monster freedom to prey on others!!!Shame on the justice system that shields such cholerot!!!

 

Note the term “monster”? We’ll get back to that later.

In the comments of this post, Dassi does not pass on the opportunity to urge all her blindly faithful followers who have no inkling about what really happened to sign the petitions for extradition. 

In her post, Dassi reprints a letter she claims she wrote to Mrs. Leifer a few years back. She doesn’t say if she ever delivered the letter. More than that, the letter does not ask Mrs. Leifer for anything in terms of compensation or making amends. It just complains. And then Dassi concludes, “I just want closure.”

No. This is a lie. Closure would be something such as an acknowledgement, apology and perhaps some compensation. This is not what Dassi is after. Dassi wants to tear Mrs. Leifer away from her family, thus destroying it, get Mrs. Leifer extradited all the way to Australia, put her on trial in a non-Jewish court, and get her imprisoned for as long as possible. This is not closure, this is revenge. Actually, to this day, after all her work and her trial and her book, she still hasn’t even received any acknowledgement. Mrs. Leifer still maintains her innocence. 

Do you have “closure” now, Dassi?

Dassi is oblivious that she is now attacking Mrs. Leifer. Not just in words but physically. Chasing her with cameras and getting her arrested and jailed and extradited and tried and imprisoned. 

None of this is sanctioned by our Halacha. 

Dassi maintains that Mrs. Leifer has no right to defend herself against these unsanctioned and destructive attacks. Nor that “supporters” who are aware of Dassi’s unsanctioned aggression have a right to speak out in Mrs. Leifer’s defense.

So, although Dassi felt justified to write, 

But no matter where I turned, I couldn’t escape the looming presence of the court or the relentless attacks from Malka Leifer’s supporters.

the truth is that wherever Malka Leifer turned, she couldn’t escape the looming presence of Dassi Erlich, her sisters and supporters and Meyer Seewald and Shana Aaronson. JCW spent thousands of shekels of their donor’s money to have a PI trail Malka Leifer for at least 200 hours. They found evidence that she is coherent enough to stand trial, but no evidence of any seksual misconduct.

This event prompted me to write my post about Judging the Judges II. The post said that I want what is best for everybody and that Dassi will do more harm than good to herself by pursuing her illegitimate prosecution. It also suggested that Mrs. Leifer may also be a victim of abuse.

For writing this post I was relentlessly attacked by Dassi Erlich, all her followers, as well as by Meyer Seewald and Shana Aaronson, mostly on June 7, 2017.

Here is a comment by one Pinni Biber: 

O. M. G. What a despicable excuse for human existence. What a disgusting, slanderous, ill-informed, misguided, unintelligent, judgemental, stupid idiot. 

I urge everybody to write him and tell him what they think of him.

You can email Yechezkel directly at; 1a7b.author@gmail.com.

Dassi, I am so sorry you had to read and possibly become re-traumitized from such an obvious complete and total moron.

Like – Reply -  June 7 at 4:37 pm

Ah, what poetic language! I will bet my mortgage money that Dassi never got attacked like that. Incidentally, you may be shocked (or maybe not) by some of the emails I actually received.

The comments thread was full of these and similar accolades, yet not one commenter, nor even Dassi herself, refuted a single word that I wrote (except that I spelled her name wrong).

Let’s move on to July 2, 2017. On this day Dassi needs to relentlessly attack a candidate that was hired for school principal. She went so far as to personally send a letter to the school asking them not to hire him. She does not express in the letter exactly what sins this fellow has committed except that he defended the school against Dassi’s unjustified lawsuit against them. 

How do I know the lawsuit was unjustified?

Dassi opens that very letter admitting that when the school hired Mrs. Leifer, they "were making a mistake although you could not have known it then". We also know that nobody, including Dassi and her sisters, ever told any school officials about any misbehavior until February 2008. So, for what are they guilty?

But now, Dassi wants to disrupt a man’s parnassah because he found technical ways to save the school from the lawsuit that Dassi had no business to bring. Go figure!

These types of attacks continue relentlessly over the years. They are not only aimed at me and Mrs. Leifer and the school. Anyone who said or did anything that was favorable to Mrs. Leifer was relentlessly attacked.

On Nov. 28, 2018, Dassi needs to relentlessly attack a fellow named Ronen Tzur who was campaigning to prevent the illicit extradition. Only 46 relentless attacks. One mild example from Kate Forster:

Who are her "supporters"? We need to name them so we can get them to see what they are actually supporting which is paedophilia!

And from Ilanit Leiberman: What a dirtbag!!!

This is all spurred on by Dassi who wrote in the comments: see his remarks about this campaign, jump on and give him your thoughts.

On Feb. 17, 2019 Dassi needs to relentlessly attack a Rav in Ashdod who called to help Mrs. Leifer. 169 commenters all on the relentless attack. One mild example from Avi Gilboa:

A “respected Rabbi”? A רשע גמור and a pig of a human being are more accurate descriptions.

On March 10, 2019, Dassi unethically spills out details of a private conversation between her and Rabbi Mendel Shafran. She relentlessly attacks his remarks. There were 142 relentless attacks all based on the lashon hara provided by Dassi. One mild example from Avishai Josephsohn:

This guy is no rabbi. What an imbecile. My blood is boiling  . How dare he ?????!

This post inspired me to release a two-part response in April 2019 to stand up for the maligned Rabbi Shafran (HERE and HERE). Dassi responded by creating not less than 21 screenshots of the second part of this response post for the sole purpose of relentlessly attacking me. The reason she used screenshots instead of providing a link is because she didn’t want the readers to see the first part and the referred links in my posts. Once again, this post was written to incite her lynch-mob. I can no longer access her post on her page, but I have a short list of some of the compliments I received:

Evil and twisted - He sounds deranged - Vile repugnant pig - Who is this jerk? -  What a canting hypocrite - The guy is an idiot - What a vile piece of garbage - Embarrassed to think he calls himself a Jew - Who is this moron he should be named and shamed -   Despicable and a self-righteous sob - This guy is a complete nut - This man is mentally ill, and much, much more.

On Feb. 19, 2019, Dassi maliciously and relentlessly attacks the entire Chareidi world with a cynical blood libel. She writes: 

So many communities across Israel banding together in an unprecedented manner to 'Save Leifer'. Imagine if they could come together like this to rally for the protection of their children and vulnerable.

Firstly, why are things like this unprecedented? Secondly, if someone needs to be saved from something they should not be subjected to, what should be wrong with that? 

But her worse sin is the second line where she falsely claims the Chareidi community does not rally for the protection of its children. She is writing this several years after the Chareidi world twice put out a Kol Koreh signed by over 100 Rabbanim about reporting cases of abuse directly to law enforcement. This is also after she was granted a personal and very supportive interview on Rabbi Dovid Lichtenstein’s headlines podcast. So, this posts counts not only as denial of the truth and motzi-shem-ra but also ingratitude (kafui tov). 

This post sports 278 comments. All the commenters except one join into the relentless attack. Here is one from Michelle Vivat Sobol:

Despicable ignorant fools who protect child molesters and describe her as “a great woman, the daughter of the great and righteous who is imprisoned under harsh conditions” because they don’t want her extradited to a “gentile state”; this is beyond belief . They casually forgot to mention why she’s in prison. So sick

The only exception was a brave woman named Shoshana who stood up for Halachic and moral principles. The minute she did so, she was relentlessly attacked with 126 comments, though a good percentage were Shoshana’s replies. Here is one from Naomi Meyer:

Shoshana you have no right to make any of these comments ESPECIALLY on this page which is a page of support for the victims (not alleged) VICTIMS. So why don’t you get off YOUR self righteous smug horse and leave this page as well as these girls alone. No one wants you here and no one wants to hear what you have to say anymore. You’re a disgrace. 

Yes, indeed, this is a support page with no dissent or criticism allowed. It is what is commonly called an echo chamber.  Anyone who does not think like the lynch mob automatically deserves to be relentlessly attacked by Dassi’s supporters. 

I could go on for pages and pages, but there is no need. I haven’t even mentioned the relentless attacks against Rabbi Yaakov Litzman, Rabbi Yitzchak Dovid Grossman and Mrs. Leifer’s legal counsel. I only want to present one more example that features the same level-headed Shoshana. 

This occurred on March 6, 2018. This was a very unusual post in Dassi’s Facebook page where, in the comments section, Dassi provided a play-by-play accounting of the court bail hearing. Dassi accounted for most of the comments. All of her supporters expressed disbelief that the hearing did not go as Dassi wanted and many complained of corruption. Our hero Shoshana tried to remind the mob that this is standard judicial procedure and it is to the benefit of everyone that there are protections for accused people and that there is such a thing as bail. 

One of Shoshana’s comments was: At the end of the say [day] the most important thing is that there be a fair trial in Australia and this matter gets resolved.

But immediately she was relentlessly attacked by one Nicole Iglicke Gold who wrote:

“A fair trial in Australia”-who are you kidding? She doesn’t deserve anything fair. I don’t know these girls but I am human and am sensitive to their pain. Their pain and suffering is beyond imaginable. Ask yourself, what if it were your children who were subjected to this evil evil lady? Would you be acting in the same manner? I think NOT. She is a criminal and deserves to be in jail and to have the key thrown away

So Ms. Gold, who never met the sisters and certainly never met Mrs. Leifer announces that she does not deserve anything fair. This is because she claims to be “human”. She knows for certain that Mrs. Leifer is an “evil, evil lady” just because some accusers said so.

The repulsive thing is that immediately comes Nicole Meyer to encourage this relentless attacker: Nicole Iglicki Gold thank you ... your words mean a lot to us

With maybe two exceptions, all of these posts with all the comments and relentless attacks are still on display to this very day.

So the real truth is that Mrs. Leifer's and her “supporters” defenders needed to deal with these relentless attacks which came not only from Dassi and her sisters, but from scores, if not hundreds of peanut gallery supporters of Dassi Erlich. But, this is Dassi’s book. So she can be the narcissistic victim of all the relentless attacks against her for minding her own business. I mean, she didn’t attack anybody. She is such a victim. 

Is Dassi so naïve to believe that she can set up a vicious FB page that relentlessly attacks all people who want a better outcome and that there won’t be any pushback from the people she is relentlessly attacking?? Did it ever occur to her that if perhaps she wouldn’t go around relentlessly attacking everyone and anyone in her way, that she would not be attacked in turn?

Dassi's book again reflects her naiveté that there will be no pushback to her illegitimate actions. (Even if they are legitimate in the secular world, they are not legitimate in ours.)

So much for the “relentless attacks”. The attacks from Dassi’s side are not only relentless, but they are “hateful”. This is certainly true by Dassi’s definition of “hateful” in this passage. We will understand this when we discuss the “hateful blogs” in Part 2. 

Stay tuned…