Posted on 05/08/2005 9:10:26 PM PDT by Alouette
Police said Sunday they had collected sufficient evidence to press charges against Sephardi Chief Rabbi Shlomo Amar's wife, daughter and son in connection with the alleged kidnapping and beating of a 17-year-old haredi youth romantically involved with Amar's 18-year-old daughter.
"We believe we have sufficient evidence to press charges against the suspects and will recommend that the prosecution do so," said a senior police officer involved in the investigation.
The officer stressed that police have yet to obtain concrete evidence against Amar, who is currently in Thailand on business and is scheduled to return on Tuesday. Police confirmed that Amar was at home when the youth was brought to the family's Jerusalem apartment following a night of abuse in Kalansua, but said there were conflicting versions regarding his level of involvement in the affair.
Ayala Amar, the rabbi's daughter, met the 17-year-old boy from Bnei Brak over the Internet some three months ago, police said. Meir – the chief rabbi's 31-year-old estranged son who turned secular some 15 years ago – kidnapped the youth in an effort to persuade him to break off the relationship with his sister.
During the night of the kidnapping last month, Meir took the youth to Kalansua where two of his acquaintances – Abdullah and Ahmed Maslawah – tied him up, cut off his peyot, cut his kippa in half and beat him for several hours. In the morning, the youth was taken to the Amar home, were the beating continued.
On Sunday, police confronted Amar's wife Mazal with the abducted youth. During the confrontation, the youth reportedly told police the chief rabbi was not only present while he was beaten, but also knew of the abduction. Police have said they intend to request permission from Attorney-General Menahem Mazuz to question Amar upon his return.
While police suspect Meir was the mastermind behind the kidnapping, they said he was ordered to do so by his mother, who told him of Ayala's illicit relationship and asked him to "take care of the problem."
On Friday, the three Amar family members were brought to Tel Aviv District Court which extended Meir's remand by an additional eight days. Ayala and her mother were released to house arrest. Sources close to Amar said Sunday that while he admits to being home at the time of the alleged beating, he was not aware of the abduction.
"Maybe that boy was brought to the rabbi's house in the early morning hours when Amar was sleeping," one source said. "But that does not mean the rabbi was aware of what was going on."
"First, the rabbi's apartment is big and the distance from the family room to the bedroom is far enough so that the rabbi probably never heard anything," the source added. "In addition, there are always people coming and going at the rabbi's house. It's like a train station. So even if the rabbi saw the boy on his way to morning prayers, it is not clear he would think twice about it."
"Rabbi Amar is a respected Torah figure. If he would have known about the kidnapping and the beating he would have stopped it immediately," he said.
Sources close to Amar placed the blame squarely on the shoulders of Meir, who left home some 15 years ago. Of Amar's 12 children – four boys and eight girls – Meir is the only one who abandoned religion.
Sources close to Amar also rejected claims that Ayala reciprocated the young man's love. These sources said that the youth is a known haredi juvenile delinquent.
"He forced himself on her against her will. The brother found out and decided to do something about it," one source said.
The youth belongs to a well-respected Sephardi family in Bnei Brak. Since he is a minor, there is a police ban on the publishing his name.
Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, spiritual mentor of Shas, spoke by phone with Amar. "I am sure everything will work for the better in the end," he told him. "I pray that God will bring your son back to the fold."
The Israeli Supreme Court, and Israeli courts generally, are openly liberal and are not "friendly" to the Israeli government at all. So this family's situation seems odd, to say the least. It seems very strange to me that the courts would have allowed this if the facts of the case are beyond dispute.
I didn't compare them. Oh, yes I did. For very different reasons. They both present obstacles to a peaceful resolution to the terrible and unnecessary difficulities that contunue to plague this troubled region.
And it's OK if you disagree with me, maybe we both can learn.
Your anti-Semitism is noted for future reference.
Sephardi is the Hebrew word for a Jew from the Mediterranean (it means Spaniard in medieval Hebrew), as opposed to an Ashkenazi
, a Jew from Northern or Eastern Europe (which means German in medieval Hebrew).
In Israel, Sephardim are generally Orthodox, they have their own political party called Shas, and there is tension between them and the secular/atheist Jews, the majority of which tend to be Ashkenazi in background - although more and more of the Ashkenazi population is made up of Hasidic Orthodox Jews. And hasid means a devotee of a specific tradition of Orthodox Ashkenazi spirituality. It means "faithful" in Hebrew.
Our town's paper probably doesn't have it online anymore. If I find it, I'll post it. Don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to knock Israel, I was just saying that Israel is not perfect and that it does deserve its fair share of criticism like any other country. Too often I just see conservatives giving them a free pass since it's a Jewish majority state and they don't want to "offend God."
If you'd like to be on or off this middle east/political ping list, please FR mail me.
I don't think that Israel is perfect, either. However, I don't believe that Israel would take some poor Christian (or Muslim) Arab's farm without due process and a good reason to do so. I also believe that this has seldom, if ever, occurred (with the exception of land abandoned by Arabs who left in connection with Israel's war of independence in 1948 and the 6-day war of June 1967). From time to time Israel does knock down orchards when they have been used by snipers or bomb-throwers, and on even more rare occasions it has taken land by adverse possession when it needs it for roads or security. However, it is my understanding that those cases are litigated when contested.
This story just goes to show you that any person who abandons the one true G-d from there life and lifestyle he will resort in doing the worst things people can do to humanity, hopefully this man will come back to G-d and his family before it's to late.....
"In this particular community, it seems, if a family feels their daughter's "honor" has been impugned, the older brother takes it on himself to beat up the young man who has been making the unwanted attention."
Makes more sense than killing his sister, which is what a Muslim would have done. That makes no sense at all to me.
And to me. If it had been my daughter that suffered unwelcome sexual advances, especially if that was merely a euphemism for rape, it would be more than side-locks and a hat that the perp would be missing, if you know what I mean, and I'm sure you do.
Actually since I'm not a knife person, the "young man" in question would likely become on intimate terms with my serious social purposes shotgun and/or the handgun designed by John Moses Browning.
Then explain why Messianic Jews can't immigrate to Israel under the Law of Return?! The state of Israel does NOT treat Christians equally.
Ashkenazim who assimilated into larger European culture usually became atheistic socialists, but still considered themselves Jews despite their abandonment of Judaism.
Sephardim who assimilated into the larger Islamic culture ceased to consider themselves Jews in any sense.
Therefore, when Israel was founded, the Ashkenazim split into secular vs. religious entities, both sides claiming to be authentic Jews, while the Sephardim were basically just religious Jews. Even secularized Sephardim in modern Israel tend to be very deferent to religious sensibilities.
So a lot of the political conflicts in Israel are between religious Sephardim and secular Ashkenazim.
Basically, the two sides have very different values.
Except that in this case I'm not sure there was any physical attention, or if there was, it was by mutual consent. All they were doing was chatting over the Internet.
In any case kidnapping and beating the crap out of this kid was wrong, and the family knew it was wrong, that was why they put up the family "bad boy" to do the dirty work.
I make sure that my daughter doesn't chat with boys on the Internet by breathing down her neck the whole time she's online.
I understand their signigificance -- now... But I (like several others, apparently) simply didn't know what the specific words "peyot" and "kippa" meant until I looked them up.
You must admit that the way they were used in the post could lead the linguistically ignorant to all sorts of speculation...
lol. I never thought of it like that.
Druze and Zoroastrians also can't immigrate to Israel under the Law of Return. The law of return applies to Jews, and Jews for Jesus are not accepted as Jews under Jewish law. Once people are citizens (whether they become citizens because they are Jews and eligible for an accelerated process under the Law of Return, or whether they are citizens on some other basis), they are treated equally under Israeli law.
Of course, there are some religious exceptions, for example the requirement that Jews can only be married by a rabbi under the aegis of the Orthodox governing group, whereas non-Jews can be married by whomever their religion authorizes to marry them.
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