We Interrupt the Holocaust to Bring You…

July 22, 2010 at 11:59 pm | Posted in dating and marriage, holocaust, israel | 7 Comments

A chilling story about an Arab man sentenced to 18 months in prison by and Israeli court for rape of a Jewish woman because he posed as a Jewish bachelor interested in a serious relationship. The court ruled that the consent of the woman to have sex was obtained under false pretenses, and therefore the sex was non-consensual.

Let’s put that in plan English. In Israel, only Jewish men are allowed to lie to get a woman into bed. An Arab man doing the same is a rapist. I wonder how this applies in other situations. Let’s say the man was a Christian? What if he said he was Jewish, but it turns out he had a reform conversion? What if only his father was Jewish, not his mother? What if he was a Mischlinge of the second degree? What if he said he owned a villa in the south of France, when in fact the villa was more centrally located? What if that wasn’t his real hair? What if that story about her college roommate wasn’t the most interesting story he’d ever heard?

Maybe this isn’t an interruption of the Holocaust series, maybe this is a reflection of how the racial policies of Nazi Germany have left a deep mark on the Israeli pysche. The court’s argument doesn’t hold any water, legally speaking. There is no legal duty of honesty in dating, as we well understand. Rather, what the court did was establish a racist principle as Israeli law: that an Arab must declare his racial identity or risk prosecution for otherwise legal acts. Let’s say that a Jew sold an Arab posing as a Jew some land. Could that Arab now be charged with theft, because the Jew would not have sold him the land if he knew the buyer was an Arab? At what point do you just have Arab citizens sew yellow crescents onto their clothes, so that Jews will know for sure to treat them differently?

When my wife heard the story she said “I’m so ashamed of being a Jew right now.” I responded “I’m fine with being a Jew, I’m ashamed of being an Israeli.”

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Hang on, hang on. We don’t know that it’s because he’s an Arab that he was convicted of rape. We know that it’s because he lied that he was convicted of rape. For all we know, had he been Jewish and represented himself as a neurosurgeon while in reality he was a bookkeeper, he might also have been convicted for the same reason.
However, while one can understand a woman’s disappointment if she thought she was sleeping with a neurosurgeon when she really wasn’t, we really have to question her attitude on this one.

Comment by Garnel Ironheart— July 23, 2010 #

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He was convicted of rape because he lied about being a Jew. If it was so important to her to not sleep with an Arab, don’t you think the onus should be on her to find that out, rather than just take him at his word? And isn’t it cruel and unjust to then brand this man a rapist and take 18 months of freedom away from him because of this woman’s racist phobias?

Comment by rejewvenator— July 23, 2010 #

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Like I said, we have to question her attitude on this. She was looking for casual sex but also being picky? That’s not very reasonable.
The punishment, however, seems cruel and unusual for what really was a bad judgement call on the part of the woman.

Comment by Garnel Ironheart— July 23, 2010 #

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From the New York Times (http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/07/21/israeli-court-calls-lying-for-sex-rape/?scp=1&sq=arab%20jew%20rape&st=cse):
“That same Haaretz article explains that two years ago Israel’s High Court “set a precedent on rape by deception” when it refused to set aside the rape conviction of a man named Zvi Sleiman, who had convinced women to sleep with him by impersonating a senior official in Israel’s housing ministry, and promising to supply them with apartments.”

So I don’t think their being inconsistent or anti-arab, but I do agree with the comment right before that quote, in the NYT:
“On Wednesday, Elkana Laist, who works as a public defender in Jerusalem, told Haaretz, “The test the court adopted is problematic, because it means that every time a man tells a woman he loves her, based on which she sleeps with him, he could be convicted of rape.””

Comment by Moshe Y. Gluck (The Live One)— July 25, 2010 #

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“Their” should have been “they’re”…

Comment by Moshe Y. Gluck (The Live One)— July 25, 2010 #

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There’s a big distinction between a man pretending to be a government official (which is a crime), and promising apartments to women who will sleep with him, and a man who simply claims to be a member of a different religion or nationality.

Not that I agree with the first case either. It seems to me that a man who promises financial rewards to a woman in exchange for sex is a john soliciting sex from a prostitute. His failure to pay doesn’t make him a rapist, and the fact that there transaction was illegal means that you can’t get him for fraud either. At best you can get him for impersonation. You can’t even get him on corruption charges, since he wasn’t actually a government official. As for her, I suppose you could charge her with prostitution, but she’ll probably claim that she was in it for him, not for the money… and hence it wouldn’t be rape anyway. Terrible jurisprudence all around.

Comment by rejewvenator— July 25, 2010 #

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- I think we’re agreeing that it’s bad law consistently applied. Send regards to the Mrs…
  
  Comment by Moshe Y. Gluck (The Live One)— July 25, 2010 #
  
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Rejewvenate!