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…