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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Sun Tzu who wrote (276350)	9/27/2010 1:46:02 PM
From: Sun Tzu	2 Recommendations Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

Here is an Israeli lawyer opinion on the case (and a woman at that). Israel's Crazy "Rape By Deception" Case Submitted by Julie Wiener on Thu, 07/22/2010 - 12:50 We are moving forward with Ellie’s Israel-themed birthday party, which is next weekend, something I blogged about when she first came up with the idea. I’ve hired the amazing Dafna Israel-Kotok to teach the kids some Israeli songs and dances. And we’ll serve borekas, hummus, candy and other Israeli treats, procured from Main Street in Kew Gardens Hills, an area Ellie and I refer to as “the Israeli neighborhood.” The whole endeavor is a bit of a balancing act, of me trying to avoid alienating some pro-Palestinian friends and not wanting to seem like a propagandist, while also keeping true to my ideals: wanting to teach Ellie (and others) the many positive things about the Jewish state and not wanting it to be unfairly delegitimized. That said, I’m feeling rather discouraged about the place right now, what with the seemingly intractable conflict, the conversion bill in the Knesset and now this horrifying case in which, if news reports are accurate, an Arab man has actually been convicted and jailed for “rape by deception” because before having a consensual one-night stand with a Jewish woman, he led her to believe he was Jewish. Lying in order to get someone in bed is unethical, for sure, but it happens all the time. How many men claim to have different careers or promise to call afterwards? To put this in the same category as violent sexual assault is offensive to the many victims of forcible, coerced and violent sexual acts. It’s hard for me to understand how a judge could even accept such a case, let alone rule in favor of a woman who admitted to having consensual sex with someone she’d just met, but said she wouldn’t have done it if she’d known he wasn’t Jewish. Ick. I could see, maybe, her being upset if he married her under false pretenses, but this was a tryst! While I do not agree with them, I understand and respect many of the reasons Jews object to intermarriage. But Judaism doesn’t condone premarital sex anyway (certainly not between two people who barely know each other); if you are OK with one-night stands, then the only reason you could be against having a one-night stand with an Arab (to whom you are apparently attracted) is racism. Talk about bad PR for an Israel struggling to prove it is not racist and that its Arab minority has full equal rights. Can you imagine a black man in the U.S. (or any country) imprisoned for trying to pass as white? Sounds like something out of 1950s Mississippi. I really hope the decision is reversed, the judge fired, the man released and that Israeli society (and the government) explicitly denounce this crazy law. thejewishweek.com

To: Sun Tzu who wrote (276350)	9/27/2010 8:03:02 PM
From: TimF	2 Recommendations Respond to of 281500

Apparently there was no real Rape I don't see how you can be so certain. I'm not saying there was an actual rape, I'm saying we don't know the truth. The only argument to back up your "Apparently there was no real Rape" statement is the claims by the defendant and the defense attorney. I'm not calling them false. They could easily be true, but they don't exactly amount to serious evidence. The DA gave up on trying it as forcible rape, likely because there wasn't enough evidence to be certain of a conviction. Which doesn't prove there was no rape (or in any way suggest there was a rape). So he allows for a plea bargain. The fact that he didn't want to go to trial suggests that its likely the evidence was thin, but is hardly proof that the defendant is not guilty. If there was no real rape than the woman in this case is guilty of filing a false report, but you'd have to actually prove the claim was false to convict her, and that's very hard to do unless she admits it. And even if she was convicted she probably would get off very lightly, compared to the penalty for rape that her false report could have resulted in an innocent man receiving. Even without any racial or political issues, situations like this are tough. Either a rapist gets off free (or gets convicted of a lesser charge like in this case), or an innocent man gets convicted. Or sometimes the case is borderline and confusing. Its not just an issue of knowing all the facts, even if we knew all the facts, at the margin, whether a particular incident was rape, is not always clear cut. I myself would lean towards the standard where you only convict of rape when its clearly rape. When the perp used force, or threats or intimidation on an unwilling victim, or a victim not in a state to be able to resist. Not "rape by deception", or "I was drunk, and I wouldn't have let him do it if I was sober", or any other sort of confused, uncertain, or borderline case.