חשד: בכירי שב”כ ביצעו עבירות מין חמורות (כולל אונס) בראשת הענף, הנאשמת בגניבת שני מיליון ש”ח מכספי הארגון
Though the issue of sexual abuse and predation has been front page news here in the U.S. over the past month, this has always been a major problem in Israeli society. It’s especially rampant in the military and intelligence agencies. I’ve written here on multiple scandals involving rape and harassment.
Tonight, there is a new one: an Israeli Lieutenant Colonel in the Shin Bet has accused two of her superior officers of raping her. A third “very senior official” has also been charged with sexual harassment and indecent assault. Israeli TV reports that the alleged victim has been examined via polygraph and the results found her to be truthful.
However, an Israeli security source urged me to be cautious, because he noted that the victim is one of those who was caught stealing from the agency in a high profile case I reported a few months ago in which two employees were accused of stealing $500,000. The source encouraged me not to read too much into the charges and implied that she was attempting to divert attention from the charges against her by implicating her bosses in an equally sordid scandal.
However, I’m intrigued by the connection between the two cases. It could mean one of several things:
- That the source’s claim that the woman concocted a story to protect herself is true.
- That the accused were guilty of abusing her and when she threatened them with exposure they conceived a plot to blame her for thefts involving bid-rigging and other corrupt acts. If true, this involves agency retaliation, a very serious, but common charge in such circumstances.
- Were the accused and the victim colluding regarding the financial theft? Did they know about it or find out about it and did she cut them in?
It’s unclear what evidence the victim has to support her charge of rape. She did give police her cell phone which contained numerous messages from the accused of a sexual nature. But there is the possibility that the male commanders could claim the sexual relationship was consensual. Though that might lessen the severity of the charges it would still implicate them in serious malfeasance regarding have a sex with a subordinate.
These are both theories and I don’t have more detailed information.
As I’ve written in the past, the nature of Israel’s national security state precludes offering the protections to women that they deserve in these circumstances. Security of the state and offering immunity to its protectors takes precedence over protecting the individual rights of Israeli women. That’s why Israeli police generally tend not to take rape charges seriously. It’s why so few rapists are investigated, charged and convicted. I’ve documented numerous such cases in the past here. There will be some apologists who will point to individuals like Moshe Katsav or Haim Ramon convicted for rape or sexual abuse. But these are generally exceptions to the rule and their cases are sui generis for their own respective reasons. And for every Katsav, there are ten or twenty men charged with rape who never face justice.
