Senior IDF Officer Sentenced to 11 Years in Prison for Raping Palestinians

UDPATE: The Daily Beast has just reported the name of the Ashkelon suspect who threatened scores of Jewish community centers.  He is Michael Kaydar.

I apologize right from the start here: usually when I post reports like this one I break a gag order or military censorship thanks to a well-placed source, and identify an Israeli malefactor protected by the system.  Tonight, I can’t do that.  My source is being coy and these two stories are too hot to handle as far as he’s concerned.  I can only tell you about the horrific crimes with which these two particular individuals have been charged.

חשיפה: הוטל צא”פ כדי להסתיר פרשת אונס נשים פלסטיניות בידי קצין צה”ל

An IDF Major who works with the civil administration which supervises liaison with the PA, has been convicted of raping Palestinian women (English language report).  He received an 11-year jail sentence for his crimes.  Israeli media only specifies that he was guilty of “serious sex crimes” and “bribery.”  The implication is that Palestinian women bribed him with sex in order to secure Israeli entry permits.  While it is possible that he was guilty of these crimes, my security source has revealed that he was convicted of the even more serious charge of rape.  Given the 11-year sentence, he got off lightly.  Apparently, the honor of Palestinian women comes cheap.

I laughed when my source told me he can’t identify the convicted officer because sexual sensitivities in Arab societies.  Presumably he meant the victims might be shamed before their families for what they’d done.  But a far more persuasive argument is that it is the IDF itself that is ashamed of what the officer did and feels that identifying him will further sully its reputation and the “enlightened Occupation” it maintains.  It might also embarrass the military tribunal which had a report of his misbehavior and could’ve relieved him of duty and instead sent him back to prey on more female victims.

Israel officially exploits Palestinian vulnerabilities in distributing entry permits for Palestinians from the West Bank and Gaza.  Shabak does this to recruit spies within the Palestinian community.  Often, sick individuals cannot get their medical conditions treated in in the Territories.  Sometimes their only hope is to treatment by Israeli specialists with more sophisticated technology at their disposal.  The price for doing so is informing.

This IDF officer created his own side business competing with Shabak.  He didn’t recruit spies.  He recruited sex.

Haaretz also reports the alarming news that before the current investigation began, the Major’s commanding officer had sought to remove him from his position for “ethical failures.”  However, a military contracting commission rejected this decision and permitted him to continue on active duty, where he presumably continued preying on vulnerable victims.

Today, brought the bizarre news that an Israeli-American teenager from Ashkelon has been charged as the hacker mastermind behind the wave of anti-Semitic threats against JCCs in the U.S.  He was born in Israel, but his family lived for some years in the U.S.  The Jerusalem Post says that at some point the boy made aliyah.  But if he was born in Israel then returning there wouldn’t normally be considered aliyah since he’d already be an Israeli citizen.

According to reports, he’s conducted this campaign for the past two or three years and he’s also targeted victims in Australia and New Zealand.  Israel’s Channel 2 also claimed that he might be a hired gun for “foreign interests” and that he was paid in Bitcoin:

The special Lahav 433 investigation unit discovered a Bitcoin account operated by the suspect. A series of large deposits from overseas sources suggests the suspect may have been working on behalf of foreign interests.

The suspects lawyer has also said that he has a non-malignant brain tumor, which could’ve caused his bizarre behavior.

One thing you must know about the legal defense of Israeli Jews who engage in acts of terror is that the lawyers always raise claim of mental illness.  This seems to me a variant of that defense.  Usually, the tactic fails (though several Jewish terrorists have been found insane and avoided prison).  A brain tumor, though, is a new one on me.  It may prove more effective as a way to skirt punishment.

This raises so much potential for speculation.  First, Ashkelon is the last Israeli city I would expect an Israeli-American family to live.  Second, the authorities investigating this case are not the Shabak.  Instead, they are the fraud and serious crime division of the national police.  That might indicate the crime isn’t ideological or nationalist.  In the one picture of him I saw which exposed his head, he was not wearing a kippa.  That indicates he may not be Orthodox.  On the other hand, when Israeli security services claim that a terror suspect maintained contact with “foreign entities,” they usually mean Israeli enemies like Hamas or Hezbollah.  I don’t see how that’s possible here.  I don’t see a foreign government like Iran getting into this.  It would be too bizarre.  But who knows?

But there could be an alt-right hand behind this.  Another possibility is that either the suspect himself is such an ardent Zionist that he believes he must encourage Diaspora Jews to leave and return to Israel.  He may also be trying to prove how smart and powerful he is by driving an entire Jewish community to the brink of hysteria.  If you were an especially demented 19 year-old, you might get off on that.  A really deranged Zionist might be willing to pursue such insane behavior in order to make such a point.  But I’d like to think no one would be THAT insane to contemplate something like this.  An Israeli media report says that the suspect’s father is being investigated as part of the conspiracy.  That might lead one to believe that this was a project animated by greed, rather than a nationalist or Zionist motive.

The ADL’s Jonathan Greenblatt made an especially stupid statement after the suspect was arrested.  He’s so wedded to the anti-Semitism angle that he can’t possibly give it up, even when it’s clear the suspect himself is Jewish:

“I’m relieved but still highly concerned,” said Jonathan Greenblatt, CEO of the Anti-Defamation League. “The impact of this individual’s actions is crystal clear: These were acts of anti-Semitism. These threats targeted Jewish institutions, were calculated to sow fear and anxiety, and put the entire Jewish community on high alert.”

Well, no.  He exploited anti-Semitism for his own personal purpose.  His motive wasn’t anti-Semitism and that doesn’t make his acts anti-Semitic.  This is a perfect example of the Anti-Semitism Industry at work: seeing the world through glasses that aren’t rose-colored, but rather anti-Semitism-colored.

One of the rich ironies of this case is that when the phone threats were at their height and Jewish communal leaders asked Donald Trump to denounce them, he hesitated.  He even misinterpreted reporters as accusing him of benefiting from the anti-Semitic attacks or supporting them in some way.  His response was to insinuate that the attacks might be a “false flag” operation to embarrass him.  IN other words, he really believed that his enemies (i.e. Jews, Democrats, etc.) could’ve planned this in order to harm his reputation.

So here’s the irony: turns out this was a false flag operation of sorts.  An Israeli-American Jew put the fear of God into much of American Jewry through anti-Semitic threats.  Rarely, has anything this strange happened, at least to American Jews.  The question is why a Jew would do this to the entire Jewish community of another nation.

I would be grateful to any Israelis reading this for any information that might permit the identification of either of these individuals.  They deserve to be known for what they’ve done, instead of hiding their identities and protecting them.