It is almost sure that President Katzav will be jailed for ten or more years. Sex offenders are the lowest of the lowest in the social hierarchy of Israeli jails, and their life is hell. Katzav, a sixty five years old impotent weakling, looks forward to much suffering. His via-dolorosa began with a complaint by Katzav himself that his former secretary was blackmailing him. She wanted to go back to work for Katzav after coming back from a stay abroad, and at a later stage, she demanded money from Katzav. At a certain point the woman - who is referred to as "Aleph of the President's Bureau" - hired a PR man, and the PR man contacted Channel 10, which contacted MK Shelly Yechimovich (Labor), an extreme feminist.
Katzav was an unpopular President, rabidly hated by the Ashkenazi left wing for embodying the Oriental despotic male (pic), right wing, synagogue-going believer in our primitive tribal god, untouched by Western liberal ideas.
Yechimovich met Aleph and was then interviewed by Channel 10 and said Aleph had been raped. "Until that point, Aleph did not complain of being raped and did not claim that there was a rape. What Yechimovich saw was a hated, primitive, violent, untamed Oriental male raping a powerless, opressed, female maid, and ipso facto decided that she knew what happened. The media avidly took up the sensational accusation and soon thousands of excited bloodthirsty females were demonstrating against the despotic rapist. The rest is the story of a public lynch.
I still believe it was a mistrial.
30 comments:
You may have meant miscarriage of justice. This is why the FIR is all important. The presumed victim in a state of agitation and trauma reports the course of events truthfully. He is not at leisure to embellish his account with colourful morsels.
Yemini himself is not unbiased - he is batting for the Sephardi team. The distinguished judges of the Israeli court are not as easily swayed by public opinion and feminist fashion as Yemini thinks. They carefully applied the law to the facts presented to the best of their ability and their verdict was amply justified (but due to the nature of rape trials cannot all be made public). Of course the evidence was not 100%. It never is, which is among the reasons why the prosecutor is almost always willing to take a plea bargain. Katsav chose to gamble for complete vindication (even though he is surely no COMPLETE innocent) and lost and now he and his partisans want a do-over on the bet. Sorry, it doesn't work that way.
This confirms that Israel has a strong judicial system where the rule of law prevails without double standards and no man, no matter how powerful, is above the law. I only wish that the US system was as incorruptible as this. Cases like this are properly tried in the courts and not the court of public opinion (again especially in cases of rape where the hearings must be closed under Israeli law) - the judges' opinion is the only one that counts, not the braying of ignorant partisans on either side.
Again for the millionth time Katzav has no one to blame for this whole sordid affair but himself, from the moment he sought to seduce his office help (not just one but many) to the moment he went to the police to the moment he refused the plea bargain. He has done the 100% wrong thing at every turn due to his arrogant entitled attitude - he is indeed endangered in prison because his instincts are so infallibly bad and he will end up in some unnecessary confrontation in defense of his macho Sephardic honor. He is guilty of hubris and the gods always arrange punishment for such pridefulness. He can ask his Oriental buddy Saddam in hell (when Katzav gets there) whether being stiff necked is the right approach.
K
>even though he is surely no COMPLETE innocent
Who is a complete innocent? Are YOU? Either the guy is guilty of rape, or he's not, and BTW, rape does not include things like "attempted to talk someone into sex," "had sex with a woman who regretted it afterwards," etc. I can't believe that you have more to say in defense of some chicken farmer being driven out of business than an old man being thrown in jail on spurious charges.
I have not seen all the evidence and neither have you but the judges have and they are serious people. He was not tried in the court of public opinion but in a real court with real rules of evidence and his conviction was real too.
Is a sentence of many years for rape unfair in this case? Probably, but as I have explained before the nature of the system is that you can either plea bargain for what would have been a very fair deal (probably more than fair given what Katzav did) or you can play Russian roulette in the hope that the chamber will be empty and you will walk completely free. Katsav chose to play Russian roulette and now we are supposed to be upset that he spun wrong? Sorry, I have no sympathy.
If the rape charges are over the top, keep in mind that there were a number of complaints that were legally barred by the statute of limitations but still weigh in the moral calculus. Not one or two but EIGHT women came forward (and possibly there were more who did not) - this guy is as bad as Clinton, Gore or Edwards. Running harems like this is not compatible with modern life (unless you are Hugh Hefner and he at least pays the women well).
K
Well, no doubt that Katzav tried to seduce his office help all along his political career. He was an imbecile office Don Juan, like many others. In today's politically correct environment, seducing the office girls is the worst of crimes. I wonder how would K judge Groucho Marx running after the secretary around the table in that famous film scene. Or the boss in "9 to 5". Yet then no one thought it was a crime but everyone laughed. May be Katzav was a victim of changing norms. Anyway, is jailing him among the perverts a suitable punishment? Is he a pervert or just another office effendi?
Groucho Marx (who by the way had terrible taste in women - he married brainless blonde bimbos over and over and never sought someone to be his partner and equal) did his skirt chasing 80 years ago. Yes, times have changed - it's not 1931 or 1961, it's 2011. There was nothing comic about the way that Katzav went after these women over and over - pathetic is more like it. This is the man who is supposed to embody the dignity of the Jewish people, to be the head of our state? Maybe he confused head of state with Shah or Arab prince. I know that Herzl wanted the Jews to be a people like any other people but I don't think this is quite what he had in mind. It was inevitable given the history and geography and the destruction of the majority of the world's Ashkenazi Jews that Israel would end up being more "Oriental" than I would have liked but this is a bit too much.
For the nth time Katsav didn't have to serve a day in jail. He was offered a deal with no jail time, with the full knowledge that if he refused it he could end up in this situation. And yet he wanted to gamble in order to go completely scott free and receive total vindication (thereby implicitly reducing his accusers to the status of whores and liars. Would that have been justice for his victims (and yes they were victims) any more than a multi-year sentence will be for him?
K
Koko has filed a discrimination complaint against him, that he did not attempt anything at all with her; what was he thinking.
Anon.
K,
Victims of WHAT? Hearing shit they wished they hadn't heard? Yeah, welcome to the world the rest of us live in. Unless Katsav chlorofomed them or held them down and fucked them when they were incapacitated, they weren't rape victims and to call them such does a disservice to actual rape victims. Turning down a "deal" where in exchange for pleading to bullshit charges you suffer mitigated consequences is a principled decision; you sound like a guy going "well, of course they burned down his business; his own fault for turning down their offer of 20% of income for protection."
Also, I don't know where you get off looking down on the Sephardim. If your main criterion for judging people is whether they are Jewish or not, the Sephardim are as Jewish as you are. If it is IQ, then you should be looking up to the NE Asians; with their 115 average IQ and population in the 100s of millions, they're much better off in this regard than Jews. And, to boot, they lack any inconvenient restrictions on diet and lifestyle, or any unpragmatic cultural norms.
B, your understanding of rape is out of step with the law as it exists in Israel and many other countries. It is no longer necessary to hold a knife to the female's head before it is considered rape. Govern your conduct accordingly.
It is not extortion to threaten to take action that is itself legal - I can't threaten to burn your business down but I can threaten to bring a lawsuit against your company for $10M unless you settle my claim for $1M. The court, not I, ultimately decides if my $10M claim is valid. That's exactly what happened here, but with years and not dollars.
K
I don't look down on Sephardim - I just don't totally identify with them as being "landsmen" - more like distant cousins than brothers.
If, through a democratic process, we redefine piss as champagne, I still won't drink it. Words have meanings, and when you institutionalize a lie, it doesn't become a new truth. Let us learn from the mistakes of those from Sumeria to the Soviet Union; just because a guy on a ziggurat says something, it ain't necessarily so.
The Sephardim are Jews by any conventional definition. I can't see making any meaningful practical distinction between us and them.
K
Flirting with office girls should not be considered "rape". In Israeli public service the bosses have such a limited power that I simply cannot visualize a situation where an office girl "has to" open her legs to the boss. He cannot fire her, he cannot delay her advancement, he cannot reduce her salary, and anyway, there is no lack of jobs in Israel for moderately competent office ladies. OK, being the personal secretary of Israel's President is a special position, but she could easily find alternative - maybe less prestigious - jobs. Her income level would have not suffered at all. Leaving the public service for the private sector could have doubled her income. By calling it "rape" we are entering this phantasy world of the large and growing population of childless sexless middle females in our societies. BTW, more than half of the Israeli Ministry of Justice's personnel are of that sad category of human wrecks.
We do not have access to all the facts here because of the closed nature of the hearings under Israeli law (In the US, by the way, even rape trials must take place in open court but it is customary (but not legally required) that the victims names not be printed in the press (though nowadays they often become known anyway). But I'm pretty sure that if Katsav was convicted by 3 judges of the serious crime of rape , that evidence showed that he did more than just flirt with the girls. He was not judged only by a bunch of castrating feminists in the press and on the streets (though he was that too) but by serious trained judges who are as skilled at their profession as you are at yours. If you think that all he did was flirt, you are mistaken or greatly exaggerating. Now in the modern law in Israel and many other countries (not the higher law or morality that B makes up in his own head but the actual law as it exists that they will use to actually drag you off to jail with) the crime of rape is something (considerably) more than just flirting and less than holding a knife to the victims throat. Somewhere in between those 2 things there is a line (perhaps a somewhat blurry line, a line that has shifted over time and one that Katsav was not entirely aware of, but ignorance of the law is no excuse) which if you cross it you are legally guilty of the crime of rape and Katsav apparently crossed that line. The way to avoid being put in such situations (our sages determined a long time ago) is to "build a fence around the Torah". In other words , you act in such a way that you are not toeing the precipice but instead stay well back from the edge. If you repeatedly drive at high speed down a narrow mountain road in the dark, someday your tire may go off the edge of the pavement and send you tumbling, so smart people (and apparently Katsav used an organ other than his brain to govern his actions) don't do such things over and over.
K
It occurs to me that what people are having trouble with is why Aleph returned to work following her two assaults and did not call the authorities immediately. Neither is legally required - all that is required is a lack of consent at the time of the act, which the judges found occurred.
Also what people have trouble understanding is that a "he said-she said" is not an automatic standoff (though it might have been in other days and in other situations). The judges had the testimony of Aleph and that of Katsav as to what went on in the hotel room and they chose to believe Aleph and judged Katzav to be a liar for numerous reasons. Now Katsav may have been lying only to save face and his reputation and not because he actually assaulted the woman, but the effect was that he destroyed his own credibility. If Katsav had said from the start , "I am a real red blooded Israeli gever gever and I try to bed every female who I can charm the pants off, but I never force myself." they might have believed him as to what went on in the hotel room, but instead they had his lies against the testimony of numerous women in addition to Aleph.
Now this may be alarming to some because any male who is unchaperoned with another female is potentially subject to such accusations (halacha required, impractically, that there be two additional witnesses - halacha was written by men) but that is the law. However, as a practical matter, most he said/she said cases are not accompanied by strong evidence that the man is a habitual liar and will still result in legal stalemate.
K
Katzav would have been better off under Sharia Law.
Anon.
In Iran he could have "temporarily married" the women for the afternoon.
K
I'm sure when he is re-elected, he will move the country in the direction of Sharia.
Anon.
He cannot be re-elected because he was never elected. The President is a ceremonial office that is appointed by the Knesset (parliament). I'm sure he would be more interested in instituting halacha (Jewish law) than sharia. As I said before, under halacha he would be innocent because there were not two male witnesses to the alleged acts.
K
Halacha is not as well known as Sharia.
Are elements of it incorporated in to Israeli Law? Do fundamentalist communities in New York apply it amongst themselves?
And I stand corrected. It should have been, "When he is elected Prime Minister, he will move the country..etc"
Anon.
And also, it sounds like the poor man was misinformed about the sorts of ceremonies he was expected to participate in.
Anon.
Halacha is applied (to Jews) in matters of family law - marriage, divorce, conversion, etc. Otherwise civil and criminal law is mostly adapted from the colonial British (common law) system (though not jury trials). The ultra-Orthodox (both in Israel and US) may bring their civil disputes before a Rabbinical court (beth din) if both parties agree (a form of binding arbitration) but halachic criminal law now longer exists as a living thing, nor could it because it is as archaic and backward as sharia - e.g. there could almost never be any rape prosecution because of the witness requirement, stoning is prescribed as a punishment, etc. Because Jews did not have their own state for almost 2,000 years, it was understood that "the law of the land" (local law) would be applied in such situations even to Jews.
K
K, your thinking here reminds me of those who watched Soviet show trials in the 1930's and would go "this is the law, certainly the judges are going off what's in front of them, surely they do not have an agenda," etc. As for my belief of what rape is, yeah, sorry, even if the courts define rape as solicitous glances and murder as eating a hamburger, I will still beg to differ. The courts are, at best, a reflection of a higher reality, and at worst a perversion of it; they do not get to dictate what this reality is.
According to the evidence believed by the judges, Katsav held the woman down and forced himself upon her against her will. In what sense is that NOT rape?
K
According to the evidence believed by Soviet judges, the people they were sentencing had collaborated with the intelligence services of Japan, Greenland and Papua-New Guinea to put ground glass in the food of the workers and turn the great Siberian rivers south, so that they would flow into China. In what sense is that NOT sabotage? According to the allegations of Anita Hill, Clarence Thomas etc., etc.
The details of the trial are closed. I doubt the word of anybody who keeps their mouth shut publicly, blackmails the alleged culprit (for there is no point in Katsav accusing her of blackmail if she wasn't blackmailing him,) then delivers a hair-raising tale when called out in public. On her own, she has no merit. The sexual harassment allegations of the other women, in my mind, add no credibility to the first accuser; sexual harassment is, at worst, a matter of bad taste, not a crime (I am aware the law says different. The law also says women have a constitutional right to abortions, that standards causing a 4/5+ divergence in ethnic groups' results are racist, and a bunch of other silly bullshit.) Therefore, it is irrelevant to proving Katsav's guilt. By this standard, anybody who's been alone with you in a room in the last 10 years can say you assaulted them, and if 10 other people come forward and say you've been an asshole to them ("Verbal assault!",) well, off to jail with you if you don't take a plea bargain. This is crazy.
Part of the problem that Katsav has is that, although the standard for conviction is "beyond a reasonable doubt", Israel does not have a jury system. Judges are much more cynical about witnesses lying (since they do that in front of them all the time) so, they tend to apply the Roman maxim Falsus in uno, falsus in omnibus. Katsav was not a credible witness - as a politician he was used to lying and concocting smooth seamless stories. These are the kind that judges are LEAST likely to believe because real life is messy and inconsistent - paradoxically only when you are lying do all the pieces fit together perfectly.
The accuser's story was much more believable to them, to the point where they felt that no reasonable doubt remained. I don't know what the alternative is - the flip side of your concern is that as long as you are alone in the room with a female you know, you can do anything you want to her and there is no possibility of redress.
On a jury you can usually find one sucker (or at least a landsman) to agree that there is reasonable doubt or who refuses to convict you on grounds of ethnic solidarity.
K
I have before my eyes the example of a wise Latina whom even her wise colleague and mentor Lawrence Tribe thinks is a politically engaged idiot (as revealed by his leaked letter to Obama, where he urged the Prez to appoint Kaplan instead, under the pretext that Kaplan was a SHREWD leftist.) You propose that the judges must have had no reasonable doubt remaining as far as Katsav's guilt. I have an easier time believing that they had a political incentive in believing it. I'm sure you wouldn't say that Katsav was falsus in uno unless you knew of him being caught lying about something in court-what was that?
If the accuser had immediately gone to the police about being "raped," I would have a completely different outlook on this case. However, since she waited and then attempted to blackmail the "rapist," I think this is all horseshit. There is no incentive against false rape accusations, for monetary gain or out of spite; look at those kids in NC.
http://www.haaretz.com/news/national/head-of-police-investigations-i-knew-katsav-was-lying-after-only-five-minutes-1.334585
The Tel Aviv court judges said that....Katsav had "excelled in manipulation and withholding information."
I would say this is what politicians do for a living - it is like saying that Kobe Bryant excels in putting a basketball thru a hoop. Normally you would take this as a compliment but it did not serve Katsav well in this situation.
I don't have the exact details of what the lies are but Segalovitch looks like a straight shooter and not some castrating cougar and I get the feeling that he has a pretty good BS detector and that the meter pinned as soon as he started talking to Katsav. Now again, it may be that Katsav was just covering up serial harassment and not rape but he (as he did many times in this case) screwed himself in the process. It is a case where behavior that has served you well in one arena (politics) is highly maladaptive in another arena (the court room) - Katsav would have been much better off if he was a ordinary schmuck and not such a smooth liar.
K
The Israeli cops are notorious fuckasses. Having this one going "I knew he was lying" does nothing for me; even in America, the cops assume everybody is lying, and their job is that of professional witness for the prosecution. This: "Katsav honed in on the women, acted methodically, working within a system that supported his actions, and collected evidence for a rainy day [in the event that it would be needed to defend him from accusations]" does not strike me as evidence of predatory behavior. Again, in a normal justice system, it is not the defendant's job to prove his innocence.
Finally, color me surprised that a cop thinks that "the system worked, the investigators investigated, the state laid charges, and the judges passed judgment." Well, comrades, I, for one, can't see how anybody but a Trotskyite saboteur, wrecker and harasser of vaginal comrades can be dissatisfied with this masterpiece!
I will not substitute my judgment for the judges - they saw all the evidence and they had no reasonable doubt that he was guilty and that all or most of the evidence he presented in defense was untruthful or manipulated.
http://www.haaretz.com/news/national/katsav-lied-manipulated-and-withheld-information-1.334311
The prosecution has the burden of proof and the defendant is not required to present any evidence at all, but if he choose to make statements and present evidence, it must be truthful and if his defense consists of forged documents and edited tapes, that in itself is evidence of guilt (and not just in the Orwellian sense). Someone who is not guilty has no need to present manipulated evidence. Actually this may be a case of a dishonest client defended by overzealous and slimy lawyers but for the millionth time Katsav hurt himself by acting like an all around slime ball and pissing off the judges and authorities with his lies and omissions, not taking the plea bargain, etc. Now maybe in some ideal world none of this makes any difference and only pure Olympian justice counts (but keep in mind that NOBODY can ever really know what went on in that hotel room), but in the real world all this kind of stuff counts against you and sometimes makes more of a difference in the real outcome than black letter (written) law. This does not mean that Israel is therefore some kind of Stalinist hell - this is how bureaucracies operate all over the world and it cannot be otherwise.
K
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