Via Dan Savage, the Guardian reports on a Palestinian man convicted of rape in Israel….except that this “rapist” was found guilty for posing as a Jew and having consensual sex with a Jewish Israeli woman.
The Guardian:
Sabbar Kashur, 30, was sentenced to 18 months in prison on Monday after the court ruled that he was guilty of rape by deception. According to the complaint filed by the woman with the Jerusalem district court, the two met in downtown Jerusalem in September 2008 where Kashur, an Arab from East Jerusalem, introduced himself as a Jewish bachelor seeking a serious relationship. The two then had consensual sex in a nearby building before Kashur left.
When she later found out that he was not Jewish but an Arab, she filed a criminal complaint for rape and indecent assault.
Shame on this woman, first of all. So you got duped and had consensual sex with a guy who wasn’t who he claimed to be. If that alone constituted rape, we would have an awful lot of people who met just before closing time at bars or browsing internet dating profiles claiming rape, too. The difference is that everyone else who has been duped doesn’t believe the ignominy of being duped is bad enough to ruin someone’s life over…which is exactly what 18 months in prison will do for this guy.
The judges responsible for this ruling are probably even worse people. At least the woman maybe overreacted in a fit of emotion. If you’re a trained jurist, there’s no excuse for you ruling a non-rape to be a rape. This question is posed in the Guardian piece, but would these judges have ruled the same way if it was a Palestinian-impostor Jew and a Palestinian woman in question? Not bloody likely. Some vile blogger would probably even be lauding the hypothetical Palestinian impostor for “knocking” some secularism into the “backward” Muslim, who must have just been two scarves away from a niqab after all.
This case is so unbelievable that it’s hard to even react to. This Netanyahu Israel is not the country we used to know.
The Country Estate 