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.