A wonderful post from The Strength Within.

Check it out.

Fighting Violence – The Way That Works.

Karp Killers Side-Step Murder Conviction

Thanks to a Tel-Aviv court three Jaljulya men  in prison for beating a man to death in front of his wife and daughter in 2009 side-stepped life-in-prison.

Manslaughter carries a maximum penalty of 20 years. Anyone want to guess the average percentage of time convicted criminals in Israel actually serve?

And how much time with Leonid Karp’s wife and daughter “serve” without their husband/father and with the memories of his brutal murder?

via 3 Karp killers convicted of manslaughter, not murder.

TIME Magazine
Friday, Mar. 25, 2011
Israel’s Katsav Rape Case: A Plus for Women’s Rights?
By Karl Vick / Jerusalem

In a parliamentary government like Israel’s, pretty much all executive power resides in the Prime Minister. The office of President carries certain responsibilities, such as signing treaties and appointing the head of the central bank, but it’s largely a ceremonial post. Israel’s head of state is basically there to make the country look good.

So when Moshe Katsav, who held the office from 2000 to 2007, was convicted of rape last December, it did not enhance the dignity of the office. Nor did the outburst Tuesday morning in the Tel Aviv courtroom where he had just been sentenced to seven years in prison. “You are mistaken, ma’am, you are mistaken!” Katsav cried to one of the three judges he faced. “You have committed an injustice! The judgment is wrong! You allowed lies to emerge victorious! The women know that they lied! They know that they lied, and they are laughing at the judgment!”

The jurists took turns trying to calm the defendant — “Sir, sit down quietly, with dignity,” one of them said — then returned to reading out the sentence. In addition to jail time, it calls for Katsav to pay 100,000 shekels (about $28,500) to the woman he was found guilty of raping when she worked for him at the Tourism Ministry, which the Likud Party loyalist ran in the late 1990s. Katsav also must pay the equivalent of $7,100 to one of two former employees of the President’s residence whom he was convicted of sexually harassing. His attorneys announced he would appeal.

In the spasm of agonized national self-reflection that immediately ensued, one positive note was sounded again and again: in a country that still regards itself as the only democracy in the Middle East, “nobody is above the law, not even a former President,” as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu put it.

In fact, Israelis have grown accustomed to the long arm of the law reaching into the highest levels of government. Netanyahu was elected to an office vacated by Ehud Olmert, whose trial for corruption is under way in Jerusalem. The nation’s political landscape is stippled with former officials widely expected to resume their careers after waiting out penalties.

The real import of the Katsav conviction is the offense. Israel once enjoyed a reputation as an early exemplar of women’s rights. Golda Meir was elected Prime Minister in the 1960s. Young women wait at bus stops wearing olive green fatigues and carrying M-16s, military service being compulsory for both genders.

But in the corridors of power, it’s been a man’s world for generations. “This is considered a feminist country? That’s something new to me,” laughs Irit Gazit, who runs the legal aid bureau for the Women’s International Zionist Organization. An expert on sexual harassment, Gazit has been conducting workshops for the Israel Defense Forces. With its heavily male officer corps and legions of young female conscripts, it has often had to deal with accustions of harassment, yet it remains a crucial role model for a society that reveres its military.

In the gradual change of public attitudes, women’s rights advocates say a pivot point was the 2001 conviction of Yitzhak Mordechai, a retired major general convicted of indecency after being accused of unwelcome advances by a string of female subordinates. “While we were having coffee, he forced himself on me,” one testified. “He lay on top of me and tried to put his hand inside my blouse. I said to him, ‘Itzik, what are you doing?’ ” The accusations came in what would be a familiar pattern: news of the first complaint was followed by a wave of others. “It was a common assumption that if you were in a powerful position, you could do whatever you want,” says Gazit. “It was common in the army.”

The assumption has grown a bit less common with the publicity surrounding each new case. And there have been a lot of them. In one week last November, the nominee for national police commissioner was undone by a complaint from a woman who said he had sexually assaulted her at a conference. After another women alleged he had raped and drugged her, the candidate claimed the incident was not only consensual but a threesome. Meanwhile the director of the public security ministry resigned, acknowledging a relationship with a subordinate “that went beyond the bounds of work.”

Meanwhile, Katsav’s yearlong trial proceeded largely out of view, the three-judge panel barring most press coverage after sensationalized coverage of the investigation. The verdict included the judges’ tart observation that the Iranian-born Katsav had attempted to frame his accusers, followed by the court’s release of audio tapes supporting the allegation. “Now is a time of change,” says Gazit. “We need to educate men and women both. I hope cases like Katsav’s really serve this purpose.”

There is evidence they do. In January, the civil service commission reported that sexual harassment complaints were up 40% over a year earlier, a surge attributed largely to increasing awareness of the issue. Rape crisis counselors referred to it as “the Katsav effect.”

The past few months, we here in Israel have lived through some horrendous tales of violence and sexual abuse and misconduct. Our former President was convicted of rape, a highly-important rabbi indicted for sex crimes and stories of murder and sexual assault of young men and women, often at the hands of their peers, abound.

Despite that, or perhaps because of that, this is a story I think we all need to hear: The story of one woman’s outstanding heroism in the midst of the horrible conditions being endured by Eritrean refugees.

While the world looks to Egypt for new hope, hundreds are being killed and tortured for financial gain on her Southern border.

A hopeless situation? Perhaps. But not according to Zeid and the 50 people she who owe her their lives.

A  Heroine  Seeking Shelter: Despite Being Raped, She Freed Her Colleagues

Walla! News

Boaz Wolinic

Wednesday, 16 February 2011
Zeid, a 30-year-old asylum-seeker who had been raped by Bedouin smugglers in the Sinai,  managed to steal the keys to the prisoners’ cells and release her comrades. This according to the testimonies of prisoners who fled to Israel

About 50 asylum seekers from Sudan and Eritrea were able to escape two weeks ago from Bedouin smugglers who held them in the Sinai and reached the Israeli border. About 30 of them managed to cross the border, while the others were apparently sold by Egyptian soldiers back to the smugglers. This is according to the testimonies of four refugees who entered Israel and told their version of the story to the Hotline for Migrant Workers.

The prisoners who escaped owed their lives to Zeid, a 30 year old prisoner, who through ingenuity and courage, managed to release them from the camp. They said that about ten days ago she was brutally raped by one of the guards at the smugglers’ detention camp. The refugees explain that when the smugglers returned  Zeid to the camp grounds, she stole the key to to the prisoners’ cell and hid it in her hair.

The group that was released from their cells took  captors’ Kalashnikov rifles, threatened them, and fled, armed to the Israeli border. Before crossing the border into Israel, they threw down their weapons and, thereby,  secured their entry into Israel, directly into the hands of IDF forces who took them from there to Ketziot Prison.

Zeid, the heroic prisoner, currently remains at Ketziot Prison. Abraham Asmelsh, age 25 from Sudan, who was able to escape thanks to her efforts asked to say one sentence to her : “Thank you Zeid. Thanks to you, we are still alive.” Abraham promises to keep the  key  Zeid brought to him for the rest of his life.

Rape, Starvation and Violence

The place where the refugee group was held for the past six months was like a pigsty. Conditions were appalling and difficult – without regular food, toilets, showers or proper places to sleep. ”We got a half-liter bottle of water per day. When it was very hot, we were given two bottles per person,” says Mussa Naim, one of the asylum seekers who had been imprisoned by the Bedouin. ”When I came to the desert I weighed 85 kilo. Within six months I lost 30 kilo.”

“They were taking the women every day. When I tried to prevent them from taking them, they beat me with sticks. I still have signs,” Musa said, “They argued that the women were not my sisters, so it was not my business what they did with them. The women were crying and shouting. I could not sleep. After several months, it became clear that none of them got their monthly menstrual cycle. Some of them did not realize that they were pregnant. “

Dozens of concentration camps of asylum seekers from Sudan and Eritrea are operating in  the northern Sinai Desert, half an hour from the border of Israel – Egypt. A report that was prepared by the “Hotline for Migrant Workers” presents accumulated testimony of experiences of severe abuse from asylum seekers who managed to reach Israel. According to the report,  ownership and control of the camps is divided between the Sinai Bedouin smugglers, and  Egyptian military personnel, who maintain an extensive business relationship with them.

Knife used by terrorist in a recent attempted stabbing

The terrorist stabbing  incident in a national park that left Kay Wilson of Givat Ze’ev badly wounded and took the life of her American friend Kristine Luken (see below) has the entire country up in arms.

Understandably. Meanwhile, deaths by stabbing have become a weekly if not more frequent event in our little corner of the world.

When will the citizens of this country be just as outraged  and prepared to step forward to stop criminals from killing and maiming as they are to stop terrorists?

Meanwhile a national prosecutor strike is throwing a wrench into our already overworked and under-achieving criminal justice system. Even accused terrorists, murderers and pedophile Oren Korido have been released to house arrest because prosecutors are refusing to try cases until their strike is settled.

Don’t we have enough challenges to deal with already? Let’s hope the prosecutors and their bosses will hurry up and come to terms— before anyone falls victim to the criminals flowing out the justice system’s revolving door.

Police: Stabbing was probably a terror attack

By MELANIE LIDMAN
19/12/2010

“We are still looking at all directions, continuing the investigation,” says police spokesman, after US woman found dead near J’lem.

Saturday’s stabbing and murder of two young women in a forest near Beit Shemesh were probably a terrorist attack, police said on Sunday.

The police investigation is still under way into the attack that wounded Givat Ze’ev resident Kay Wilson, an olah from Great Britain, and killed her American friend Kristine Luken, as they were hiking in the wooded hills west of the capital.

“We are still looking at all directions, still continuing the investigation, and questioning people who may have seen them,” police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld told The Jerusalem Post on Sunday. “The main direction is that this was a nationalistic attack, though we haven’t ruled out the possibilities of a criminal incident.

“There have been no claims [of responsibility] by [terrorist] organizations,” Rosenfeld noted, however.

The body of Luken, a US citizen living in England who was visiting Israel, was found south of Mata, approximately 400 meters from the road between Mata and Beit Shemesh, police said. Her body was discovered around 6:30 a.m. on Sunday.

Wilson, a tour guide who worked part-time for Shoresh Tours, a Christian tour company, was stabbed and seriously wounded and handcuffed, but managed to drag herself to the road. There she saw two families, who called the police.

After she gave a brief account of the incident, Magen David Adom evacuated her to Hadassah University Medical Center in Jerusalem’s Ein Kerem.

On Sunday, police investigators interviewed Wilson in her hospital bed for several hours.

Her condition was improving and she was expected to leave the hospital in two to three days, a Hadassah spokesman said.

“[Wilson] had her hands bound, and she was stabbed pretty bad in the upper part of her body,” Rosenfeld said. “The obvious intention was to have her killed. This was not something where they were just trying to take her purse. It was a serious crime scene. We’re talking about two women walking around the Jerusalem Forest, we’re not even talking about Judea and Samaria.”

Wilson described her ordeal, telling reporters that her attacker removed her Star of David necklace and then stabbed her in the chest.

Wilson and Luken had been hiking in the woods when two Arab men asked Wilson for water in Hebrew, she said. After they disappeared from view, Wilson became uneasy about their intentions, and told Luken they should return to Mata.

As they walked toward the village, the attackers pounced on the women, stabbing both repeatedly.

Wilson said her attacker had used a knife with a huge blade, adding that it looked like a bread knife. Wilson managed to produce a small blade of her own that she carried for selfdefense, and stabbed her attacker once, she said.

But after being stabbed again and again, Wilson fell to the ground and played dead, waiting for the men to leave. She provided harrowing descriptions of hearing her friend struggle for breath before dying on the ground beside her.

After a few minutes, Wilson found that she was able to stand up, and walked toward Mata. She saw a passing car but was unable to shout due to as she was having difficulty breathing.

She then found the two families sitting in a park, and turned around to show them that her hands had been bound. The family alerted police.

Several hundred people searched for Luken overnight Saturday, including units with rescue dogs, combat soldiers, police helicopters, mounted police, and several hundred other police officers.

After Luken’s body was found, police remained at the scene for three hours, combing the area for information.

The security level had not been raised in the Jerusalem area as of Sunday, though police were coordinating with security in the villages around Jerusalem and Beit Shemesh to be extra vigilant.

Rosenfeld said the police were waiting for “concrete answers” before updating security procedures.

Yaakov Lappin contributed to this report.

Man aged 20 stabbed to death in TA brawl

By YAAKOV KATZ

17/12/2010

4 arrested on suspicion of involvement in argument which lead to attack; Lawrence Amsis found laying on sidewalk bleeding profusely.

Four youths were arrested over the weekend on suspicion of being linked to the fatal stabbing of 20-year-old Lawrence Amsis early on Friday morning outside the Terminal nightclub in Tel Aviv.

Police say Amsis was set upon by a group of suspects on Rehov Hatzfira near the club following a verbal altercation in the nightclub, situated in Tel Aviv’s Yad Harutzim area, the scene of lethal violence in the past.

During the fight, one of the suspects produced a knife and stabbed Amsis, police said. He was rushed to the Ichilov Medical Center in Tel Aviv, but died of his injuries within a few hours on Friday morning.

Soon after his death, police arrested two suspects aged 20 from Tel Aviv and Rishon Lezion on suspicion of being linked to the incident.

On Friday morning the Tel Aviv Magistrate’s court extended the suspects’ custody by three days.

The suspects hid their faces beneath their clothes during their arraignment to avoid photographers.

Two additional suspects, aged 18 and 22, both from Holon, were arrested on Saturday evening in connection with the stabbing.

“The background to the mass brawl that broke out in the club, and continued outside it, is still unclear,” Tel Aviv police said in a statement.

Police have shut down the Terminal nightclub for 30 days.

Relatives of Amsis said he worked in plumbing and had been saving money for higher education.

Friends at the Christian Scout youth movement where he was active have expressed shock at his violent death.

The homicide investigation is being led by detectives from the Yiftah police station.

15-year-old dies after stabbing in Beersheba

By JPOST.COM STAFF and YAAKOV LAPPIN

09/25/2010

Police believe stabbing outside absorbtion center followed argument with youths; MDA crews arrive after youth found by passer-by.

A 15-year-old teenage boy died of stab wounds in Beersheva on Friday night after being involved in a fight with other youths near an absorption center, police said.

The youth, a resident of Kiryat Arba, was found in a mortally wounded state by a passer-by and was rushed by paramedics to the Soroka Medical Center in Beersheva, but died of his injuries soon after arrival.

Police launched an investigation, and arrested four suspects on Saturday – three minors and an adult – on suspicion of being involved in fight which led to the youth’s death.

The suspects have denied any involvement. They were questioned at Beersheva police station.

Police suspect a fight broke out between two groups of youths during which the teenager was repeatedly stabbed.

The investigation continues.

“What did I do wrong?” was the underlying question posed by the letter.

This was  my response:

Thank you for your letter. First of all, what a harrowing experience!  We are angered and saddened that you had to experience it at all. And we are very impressed  that you have decided to turn it into a learning experience. We applaud your strength and your wisdom.

First of all, here is a list of several things we can tell from your story that you did right:

• You trusted your intuition when it told you that something was not right about the situation
• You tried to put distance between yourself and the man who was worrying you.
• You saw the situation as one that might require self-defense skills
• You sat down next to someone else to create safety in numbers
• You tried to set a verbal boundary
• You kept reassessing the situation as things changed
• You called your friend for support and help
• And, most of all, you never gave up

So, as disturbing as your experience was, you succeeded in keeping an incident that started off as sexual harrassment into what your attcker clearly intended to turn into sexual assault. In short, you won!

Now, let’s take a look at some of the details of your story and discuss a few things that might be helpful to you now and in the future:

1) “The second man started staring at me. I looked away and tried to ignore him”: This is one of those situations that many of us have difficulty with. The question I would ask here is: Did you choose to look like you were ignoring him among other alternatives (like using strong body language, creating a physical barrier, using your voice, etc) because you thought it would work best, or did you choose it because you were worried about embarrassing yourself or hurting his feelings if you choose a more pro-active course of action? The fact is that pretending to ignore someone is a legitimate technique that works some of the time. As it happened here, each time he moved closer and, thereby, tested your boundaries, you were also in a position to test the effectiveness of the technique you were using and perhaps try something else.

2)  “I couldn’t move further over on the bench because another women wearing earphones was sitting there and I didn’t want to bother her“: Since we can now look back and see that having your friend join you was what finally deterred this persistent harasser, we now know something we could only guess back then: waking this Beauty from her slumber, i.e. getting her to remove her earphones and asking her to ally with you, might well have stopped the situation in its tracks. From experience, we can tell you that getting her attention would have been a favor to this young woman, though she might not have appreciated it at the time . Her disconnection from the environment sets her up as a prime target for a potential assailant like this one. Perhaps she would have learned the lesson that pretending that nothing is happening around you doesn’t make it so— without having to go through the kind of harassment that you endured here.

3) “I tried to speak to him in the most aggressive voice I could muster but all that came out was: ‘ Stop. Enough. Please, that’s enough.” : First of all, this tactic DID result in him taking his hands off of you and onto himself. So it obviously had some effect. In order increase its effectiveness, there are a couple of things you might consider:

4) “In any case, I know not to wait alone at bus stops if possible— especially not at night.” : Be sure that you learn the right lessons from your experience. There is nothing wrong with your choosing to wait at a bus stop alone at night or at any other time of day. HE was the only one who did anything wrong here. You have the right to be where you wish when you wish. And, as you have demonstrated so well, along with that right goes taking responsibility for your own safety, i.e. paying attention to your environment, listening to your intuition, setting boundaries when you feel you need to, removing yourself from difficult situations when you can and fighting like a tigeress to get away when you can’t. If you do these things, there is no reason to restrict yourself, who you are,what you say, how you dress or where you choose to be. Self-defense training frees us to be who we are, to have our freedom and to stay safe all at the same time.

And one more thing. Be kind and compassionate with yourself. Your nervous system doesn’t care whether or not your struggle became physical; it only knows that it fought a  pitched battle for its survival. The fact that you “won” does not mean that it was not  traumatic.  Talk about what happened. Learn from it. Grow from it.

It may not feel like it right now but yours was a story of self-defense success. We can’t prevent people from acting like idiots. Sometimes we can stop them. In your case, you did more than that; you prevented a physical assault.

We are very, very grateful for whatever part we were able to play in that victory and in your many victories to come.

The fact that abuse is a serious issue in Israeli society is disturbing enough. However, the level of underreporting of the abuse is appalling.

This is a society that has always prided itself on its independent spirit and on its citizens’ readiness to roll up their sleeves and ‘do the difficult’.

The news brings us more and more stories of murders and attempted murders within families. We are shocked, but how shocked can we be when the friends, relatives and neighbors of these children refuse to step forward and try to stop these tragedies before they occur?

In the end, it is not only these children who pay the price. Abusers are much more likely to abuse their children; victims of violence at home are much more likely to commit acts of violence outside the home. And what does it do to our spirit as a nation when we hear the cries of our children in the night and do nothing?

When we keep silent at  the abuse of our children,  the final blow strikes us all.

Child abuse underreported throughout country
By RUTH EGLASH

Jerusalem Post
November 11, 2010 04/11/2010

Percentage of sexual abuse cases reported are higher in Jerusalem; the 33,751 child abuse cases reported in 2009 “only the tip of the iceberg.”

The percentage of reports of physical and sexual abuse against children in 2009 were much higher in Jerusalem than in other parts of the country, although overall, child abuse remains underreported in every region, a new study published Wednesday by the Haruv Institute shows.

Based on the number of reports filed with the social welfare services in each district nationwide, the Haruv Institute researchers found that reports of sexual abuse in the Jerusalem area made up 25.5 percent of all reports of child abuse in the region, while 47.4% of the reported cases involved physical abuse.

These rates were significantly higher than in other parts of the country, with reports of sexual abuse in the southern region, for example, making up only 12.2% of that region’s abuse reports, and physical abuse cases accounting for 42.4% of the reports in Tel Aviv. However, reports of general neglect among the capital’s children were relatively fewer than in other regions.

In Jerusalem only 27.1% of the reports involved neglect, while in the south it was 53.8%, 45.1% in the North and 41.7% in Tel Aviv. “Neglect” is defined in several ways, including children not attending school, left unsupervised at home or wandering the streets unaccompanied.

Haruv director Prof. Hillel Schmid noted that the actual number of abuse reports in Jerusalem was relatively low compared to other regions. He told The Jerusalem Post that the high percentage of sexual or physical abuse reports in the capital was likely because only the severest or most extreme cases of abuse were reported to the authorities, while lower levels of “neglect” are often not recognized as abuse among the city’s large haredi and Arab populations.

“There seems to be a difference in the legitimization and definition of neglect among haredim and the Arabs as compared to the mainstream society,” said Schmid, a former dean of the Paul Baerwald School of Social Work and Social Welfare at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. “There is a very different approach by these communities and not every case of neglect is viewed as such.”

However, Schmid was quick to add that overall, cases of child abuse remained underreported in all sectors and regions in the country, despite a law that specifically requires the public to report cases of suspected child abuse or neglect. He said that few people come forward with information and pointed out that the 33,751 cases of child abuse reported to the social welfare services in 2009 were most likely “only the tip of the iceberg.”

The Haruv report also examined child abuse reporting in the US and Canada, noting that neglect cases in the US from 2008 constituted 65% of all reports, physical injury 18% and sexual abuse 10%, while in Canada reports of neglect made up 35%, physical abuse 27% and sexual abuse 3%.

“The higher rates of reported neglect in the US and Canada lead us to believe that North American society has a greater awareness of the need to report such abuse cases than in Israel,” said Schmid.

“The general population here is not enthusiastic about reporting cases of abuse or suspected abuse. People are not only put off by the bureaucracy, where they have to fill out paperwork and give personal information, but in addition, we are a much more violent society than in the past and we either don’t notice the abuse or don’t feel it is important to report.”

He said that along with its research, the Haruv Institute had already started working with family doctors and pediatricians at health funds and hospitals, training them to recognize signs of violence and abuse among children and encouraging cooperation between medical professionals and social workers.

“In many places doctors do not know the social workers and there is little coordination,” said Schmid, adding that many doctors are not familiar with the signs of child abuse.

The Haruv Institute was founded three years ago by the Charles and Lynn Schusterman Family Foundation with the goal of becoming a world center for advanced research in the field of child abuse within the family in Israel.

The institute also works closely with the Welfare and Social Services Ministry and in training all professionals that work with children.

Firends and neighbors of 26 yo Ethiopian woman murdered by her husband

Unlike news stories about politics and global intrigue, murder rarely makes it into Israel’s English-language media. Perhaps it is deemed unfit for international consumption. So when an entire series of articles appears in YNet News,  the Jerusalem Post and Ha’aretz,  it is not business-as-usual.

In this deeply family-oriented society, the sheer number of family members murdered by their own flesh-and-blood in the past several weeks has hit a nerve.

I can’t speak for all Israelis but as I scan the headlines and see the names of veteran Israelis, Ethiopian and Russian immigrants,  Arabs and Bedioun, men, women and children from big cities, small towns and villages all grieving for sons, daughters, spouses, children and grandchildren, I no longer find myself asking “when will it end?” but, rather, “which of us will be next ?”

Pregnant woman murdered in South Tel Aviv
The Eritrean citizen in her fourth month of pregnancy was found dead in her apartment.

Ha’Aretz 12.11.10

By Yaniv Kubovich and Yanir Yagna

A migrant worker originally from Eritrea was found without signs of life in her South Tel Aviv apartment on Friday night. The woman, in her 30s, was apparently four months pregnant. Police are investigating all possibilities.

The woman’s brother had been trying to reach her for several hours, but she didn’t answer his calls. He arrived at the scene and found her already dead. The brother called emergency aid workers and the police, who are currently searching for the woman’s husband.

In June, a woman in her eighth month of pregnancy was murdered in Ashdod after entering into an argument with her neighbor. The woman’s fetus was delivered in an emergency c-section operation.

The Ashdod police arrested the neighbor, a 38-year-old woman, suspected of having stabbed the victim to death after the latter had spilled coffee in her doorway.

Netanya couple seriously hurt in suspected murder-suicide attempt
Man, 34, allegedly shot his wife while their 3-year-old daughter was in the apartment; incident comes as the latest of several recent cases of severe domestic violence.

By Yaniv Kubovich

An attempted murder suicide left a Netanya couple in serious condition, police said on Saturday, in the latest in a string of domestic violence cases in recent weeks.

A preliminary probe of the event lead police investigators to believe the man, 34, shot his wife in the head, later trying to commit suicide. The woman, who was evacuated to the city’s Laniado hospital, is in critical, with the husband is in serious condition after suffering gun shot wounds to the chest.

The couple’s 3-year-old daughter was reported to have been present in the apartment on Netanya’s Etzel street during the incident.

Late last month, a man allegedly stabbed his wife to death before taking his own life in Petah Tikva.

Paramedics who arrived on the scene confirmed the death of the 43-year-old man, who had hanged himself. His wife, 32, was taken to Beilinson Hospital to the Rabin Medical Center in Petah Tikva in critical condition. She succumbed to her wounds shortly after arriving at the hospital.

Neighbors had apparently heard shouting from the apartment and alerted police. When police arrived, they spotted the man, who had hanged himself from the grating of the apartment’s balcony. They then entered the apartment and found the wife in the living room with stab wounds covering most of her body.

The couple had immigrated to Israel from their native Ethiopia in 2007. They had no children and no previous police record.

On Wednesday, Police arrested a woman in the central Israeli city of Ra’anana suspected of killing her two daughters. [see story below]

Police: Mom murdered 2 girls

Mother admits to strangling two girls aged four, six in Raanana home, according to police

YNET 11.10.10

Raanan Ben-Zur

The bodies of two girls aged four and a half and six were found strangled Wednesday in the apartment they shared with their parents in Raanana.

Paramedics arrived to find the girls dead. Police questioned the mother, Michal Aloni, who was found in the apartment along with them, and say she admitted to the murder. “I took their lives,” police say the mother confessed.

The girls were identified as Roni and her older sister Natalie. The mother’s 42-year-old brother was also arrested because he was in the apartment at the time of the murders.

The girls’ father, who has four children from a previous marriage, was also detained for questioning. His first wife fainted upon arriving at the scene. He said he was the one who alerted rescue forces, after arriving home to find his daughters dead.

In addition, a preliminary investigation has revealed that the mother has been institutionalized in the past. Magen David Adom spokesman Zaki Heller described the events. “At 1:20 pm we received a call about two children found dead in an apartment in Raanana. The paramedics found two girls lying lifeless in their beds,” he said.

The suspected murder is the last in a string of incidents in which parents took violent turns towards their offspring, the previous one occurring in Tel Aviv, where a mother threw her two small children from a fourth-floor window.

Before that, in July, Itai Ben Dror stabbed his three children to death in their sleep, and then attempted to take his own life in his Netanya home.

What is the opposite of a “victimless crime”? Perhaps a crime in which the victim is victimized first by the criminal and then by the System.

That is what happens 50% of the time in cases of sexual assault of children at least the way the law is currently written in Israel.

Apparently, the current law does not allow the testimony of children, brought to the court by  investigators specially-trained to work with child victims, to be the sole evidence on the basis of which a criminal case can proceed.

Let me translate that into reality for you. A child with the courage to report having suffered a terrible violation goes to the police. The police investigate. In the pursuit of protection and, perhaps, justice, the child tells his/her horrendous story. No other witnesses? The case gets thrown out for lack of evidence. A pedophile walks free.

I know that the wheels of justice turn slowly. I know that our country is scrambling to come to terms with the dark side of being a truly modern Western Democracy. I know that lawmakers are working to patch this hole in the fabric of our justice system.

Now explain that to a child…

50% Of Rape Cases Are Closed For Lack Of Evidence

Oct. 12, 2010

News1.co.il

Liat HaLevi

260 sex crime cases were closed with no criminal record

Knesset Member and Chairman of the Child Rights Committee Danny Danon: “Every day dozens of sex offenders who harm children are freed. We must change the law to enable criminals to be convicted”

38% of sex offenses closed between 2002 and 2009 were closed due to insufficient evidence. 50% of rape cases closed were closed for the same reason.

This data is part of a Knesset Research and Information Center document prepared for the Committee on the Rights of the Child for a discussion to be held today (Tuesday, 12:10:10) regarding the authorities’ handling of reports of sexual offenses against children and youth.

Committee Chairman MK Danny Danon responded: “Every day dozens of sex offenders who harm children are freed. The system is unable to convict these pedophiles, so we must change the law to enable the conviction of these criminals without causing additional harm to the children.”

Danon explained that the most problematic point is that the testimony of child investigators and the documentation of the investigation can not be accepted as the sole evidence for convicting the accused.

Unreported Crimes

A survey conducted by the Carob Institute a year ago, showed that only 55% of those who observed parents violating children reported it to the authorities. Those who did not report, noted that they did not do so due to embarrassment and fear, or not knowing to whom to turn. About a quarter of respondents claimed that they would not know to whom to turn in the case of a violation against a child.

A survey conducted by the Institute in April 2010 also found confusion among respondents regarding in which cases there is a duty to report, regarding the possibility of a false accusation lawsuit being filed against the person who reported and as to whether one can file a report anonymously.

According to Dr. Hanita Cimeren, President of the Association for the Protection of Children, “When an investigation file is closed or the attacker is exonerated, the victim is forced to experience another wave of injury that now includes frustration against the system and a blow to his or her basic confidence in its ability to protect the victim. Therefore, the findings of this study are very serious, that 260 cases  opened in 2009 for sex offenses by youth were closed on the condition of psychological treatment. Since these procedures are closed without producing a criminal record for the suspects, they are referred to the youth probation service. “

Death and despair in Lod

With 10 of 13 murders committed over the last 2 years unsolved, Lod residents are not just losing their sense of security: they are losing their sense of outrage over what is happening in their city.

That is a death none of us can afford.

After Lod murders: Riot police units enter the city