Here at South Jerusalem we’re proud that we provide our own commentary and eschew the “Wow! [link]” type of post that seems to typify so many blogs. But sometimes someone else says all there is to be said, in this case Yam Erez at Stand By Your Name.
photo by Dori Ben-YisraelYam, I await your thoughts on Israel’s inability to control alcohol consumption by minors. On the one hand, the Knesset is set to pass legislation barring stores from selling hard liquor after 11 p.m. This at the same time that Tel Aviv is papered over with posters advertising convenient single-serving plastic bags of vodka available at every kiosk and candy store. The poster shows a cool young dude drinking down a shot as if it were a soft drink. Who needs to wait until dark?
17 thoughts on “Yikes! I had sex with an Arab!”
Abhorrent, I agree. And how about the giant liquor ads that cover entire building facades, featuring the copy at the very bottom: “Drink responsibly” — in English only? How many teens’ll tune that one out?
Forget about the alcohol, it just numbs the pain. I am more concerned about the blog post from Yam Erez about the sex case. Nuremberg-type laws– or legal rulings– are a very serious matter in the history of a nation-state. The animating factor here is not the sex, it’s the despised ethnicity of the poser and his fradulent claim to be a member of a different ethnicity. Sure there are outcries. But the ruling of even a single court suggests that Ya’acov Crow laws– and attitudes– have penetrated very, very deep. Doesn’t anyone see that it’s going to be very hard to turn this around?
Yes, this outsider does. I recall seeing adds on buses with Israeli and Palestinian flags joined in the late 90’s. The second intifada has really changed public opinion in Israel. And racism or ethnic exclusion takes on an economic necessity once adequately grown. This is why, elsewhere on this blog, I suggested that a two state solution cannot be motivated (ok, should not be motivated) by a call to preserving the Jewish character of the State. There are too many Arabs already for that to be compatible with equal protection.
Civil rights battles differ by State (e.g., the US, South Africa, Israel). I suspect Israel’s battle will tell us something new about social organization and the law through the upcoming battle. You will need Arabs in alignment with you to get there. But I don’t know how to get, or where there will actually be.
What a stupid woman! I mean this obnoxious Yam Erez blogger, not the alleged “rape” victim. One of the ugliest American imports to Israel is the practice of recklessly firing the charge of “racist” or “bigot”, because you know there’s never any penalty for false accusations. We see this kind of thing from Americanized Israelis like Gideon Levy here as well. I think it’s pretty disgusting.
“Show me a Jew in the same situation who would be thus detained,” asks Erez in her “would be” proof by imagination. Well, show me a Jew in the same situation who wasn’t thus detained – I mean in fact, not in Erez’s imagination. This Erez woman is accusing a real, flesh-and-blood person, a person with a name – Tzvi Segal – of a moral failing based on nothing more than her imagination of what this real person “would” have done in a hypothetical situation she imagines. Does she know Mr. Segal personally? How much does she know about his other rulings? About his character?
To Mr. Watzman: I’m not familiar with halakhah, but isn’t there some principle or something that one should give people the benefit of the doubt before accusing them in public? I also think this ruling is ridiculous, or if it’s valid then the law is ridiculous. But it’s quite plausible that the Tzvi Segal would have applied the same principles if the ethnicities were reversed.
Aaron, I commented on the information given me, i.e., Judge Segal’s ruling. I’m not required to investigate his background, personality, or how he treats stray animals. I didn’t accuse him of a moral failing, I “accused” him of issuing an argument for his ruling with which I disagree. Isn’t that what discourse is about?
This was an accusation of racism/bigotry specifically against Tzvi Segal:
I call “racism”, and I don’t use that term lightly (I prefer “bigotry”, as “racism” is a victim of word inflation). But beyond the racism, thinly veiled as “protecting the public interest” (according to Jerusalem District Court Judge Tzvi Segal)…
You also accused the ones who “detained” the defendant of racism (“Show me a Jew in the same situation…”). You’re right, you (and Haim Watzman) are not required to do anything before calling someone a racist. Contrary to what you wrote, you do use the term lightly. The accusation itself is proof of your virtue, whether it turns out to be true or false. If it turns out to false, and you’ve libeled a judge or police officer who’s not racist, well, no harm, no foul.
Aaron,
The halakhic concept you’re searching for may be “dan lekaf zchut”. For various reasons, it’s unlikely to apply here.
Yam Erez can obviously speak for herself, but I’m not sure she was referring to what Judge Segal himself would have done if the mirror-image situation had presented itself. (Which it won’t, for a host of reasons. How many Jewish men could convincingly fake being an Arab?) In fact, there does seem to be a colorable legal basis for the decision, in that Israeli law apparently doesn’t recognize the American distinction between fraud in the inducement and fraud in fact: the Haaretz article I read mentioned the case of one Oren ben Avraham, who falsely told a woman he was a neurosurgeon.
What I think people are objecting to is the fact that the law here is ridiculously overbroad and therefore bound to be applied in ways that reflect societal prejudices. (Erez used the words “racism” and “bigotry,” not “racist” or “bigot.”) It’s still speculating, sure, but people speculate about society and its hegemonic ideology all the time. (Look at U.S. conservatives who asked what would happen to a congregant of a white Jeremiah Wright.) I haven’t lived in Israel for more than a year at a time, so I’ll fight the urge to join in the speculation, but it seems plausible. Mr. Ben Avraham, for instance, was just convicted of fraud, not rape.
I’m not a big fan of the “imagine what would happen if the situations were reversed” line of argumentation, either… it never convinces anyone but the converted. But it’s not the same as saying Tsvi Segal is history’s greatest monster or whatever.
Sexual intercourse (even within marriage) is not a contract in law. Sex must induce as many lies as war. If I said I was a Jew who believed just as you (oh hopeful bed partner) while actually having no beliefs on Judaism at all, would this not have to flame as high an outrage as some want in the present case?
Society rests on social control. This rather absurd case ignites controversy because it touches, just barely, core forms of control within Israel. Do you not think that the majority Justices in the separate but equal decision of Plessy v Ferguson (US Supreme Court, 1896) thought themselves unbiased? People enjoy being with their own kind; as long as accomodations are equal, the law may enforce seggregation. But they weren’t equal, at all, even though many were yelling otherwise for some 80 years.
Racism or ethnic exclusion are structural. The issue is not what this judge decided, but the legal causes invoked. In the 1950’s American South, you couldn’t get a all white jury (the only kind there were, basically) to convict a white of a serious crime against blacks–one reason for the Federal Civil Rights Act in the 60’s, which created Federal crimes with possible removal to another locale for trial.
It is patently absurd to think that a nation which has undergone as much as Israel has, with many of its citizens still calling the foundation of the State a “catastrophe,” does not exhibit structural racism. Of course it does, as would I if so living. Can charges of racism go too far? Of course they can, and still do, over here in the ugly US. But going too far does not imply present harm does not exist.
Those interested can read this post by Moshe Greenblatt discussing the law and a Supreme Court case interpreting it. Even though he was writing in February, he anticipates this very scenario.
Aside from the reality that Arabs and Jews are related genetically and that there really are no races or pure races this seems to me a simple case not of low level fraud which happens daily- of which there is an element, and which I assume occurs normally in sexual matters, but about the state of Israel, on the part of the judiciary, ruling as though miscegenation were the law. I can’t read Hebrew so I don’t know Greenblatt’s arguments ( maybe Ragav can say) but this seems to be about Jews not mixing with Arabs, a taboo, and it’s not surprising that this issue moves into the legal arena because it seems culturally to be what is happening now.
Suzanne,
First, a correction: his name is actually Goldblatt. Somehow I saw “Goldblatt” and two seconds later typed “Greenblatt.”
Briefly, it turns out that Israeli law considers as rape sex “with the consent of the woman, which was achieved with fraud concerning the identity of the actor or the nature of the deed.” Apparently the law dates to English times (perhaps motivated by fishermen coming home to their villages in the dark, he jokes), and Goldblatt hadn’t seen any case where it was applied until a 2008 Supreme Court case (where a man named Tzvi Sleiman apparently told women he slept with that he worked for Bituach Leumi—the National Insurance—and promised them apartments and other perks). He speculates as to what sorts of mistakes could qualify: A supposedly married man who’s actually single? An ostensible fighter pilot and successful businessman who’s actually a postal clerk? A Jew who actually turns out to be an Arab?
The court basically says that that section of the law is implicated where the woman wouldn’t agree to sleep with the man under “ordinary” circumstances if she knew the facts. It acknowledges that there will be edge cases, and quotes Potter Stewart’s dictum about pornography: “I know it when I see it.”
As I said, there seems to be a colorable basis for the decision. But what a stupid, stupid law. If it were enforced regularly against ordinary Israelis, I’m sure it would have been repealed by now.*
* Not an accusation of personal racial animus against Israeli citizens, Knesset members, or any of the other persons of unimpeachable integrity who run Israeli society and live in daily fear of being called racists by blog commenters.
Raghav, thanks- you say there seems to be a colorable basis for the decision- meaning seemingly valid ( but not?) Again I am at a loss re your link, not reading the Hebrew. I don’t know what the law ( I assume a secular law covering all citizens)) actually says but applying it selectively and only in this case practically requires a comment about state sponsored racism, making it illegal to mix. If that is not the case then it must be illegal to simply lie or for anyone to misrepresent themselves in any interaction.
That the woman would have sex so easily, and also be responsible, of course we don’t talk about. that leaves me wondering if an Arab woman, in a reverse situation could have the law so applied. I think not.
Can you imagine the overcrowding in prison if every guy who claimed to be single/divorced/in love/interested in marriage was put in jail for deceiving?
I can’t wait till they start putting people in jail for adultery!
Some sexual lies are or should be criminal, such as when someone omits telling a sexual partner that s/he has HIV. And, generally, I believe lies can be an assault, and I can conceive of them doing significant damge in the arena of sex. And it is too often indeed an arena.
By imprisoning this Arab, the State asserts that hiding his ethnicity is an assault, not as horrible as HIV, perhaps, but as real. The underlying issue is whether the State should sanction pyschological damage based solely on race. In the US in the 1940s and 50s some house deeds had a proviso that the buyer could not, in the future, sell to another which jeopardizes the ethnic character of the community; mostly, don’t sell to blacks. The Supreme Court declared such clauses unenforcible as repugnant to the 14th Amendment. Objective damages were greater than in the present case, as then selling to a black could indeed depress local property value. Not all damages (such as declined property value do to prejudice) are open to remedy if the remedy is seen to hurt others more (those wanting to buy houses in such areas).
This Israeli court has sanctioned racial exclusion by allowing criminal punishment. Racial exclusion will most certainly not be limited to this kind of case. Perhaps it will become a watershed case before the Israeli Supreme Court (if your law can evolve to strike down such things).
Clearly, your society continuously provides pivots for change. Someone has to do it, though.
Gregory,
Right. The test the Israeli Supreme Court came up with asks what the victim would agree to under “ordinary” circumstances, which explicitly calls for a contextual inquiry. If ordinary circumstances for a Jewish Israeli means “no Arabs,” but not vice versa, then you wouldn’t be able to find a Jew in the same situation who would be detained, just as Yam Erez says. No disgusting accusations of racism against real, flesh-and-blood persons needed.
There’s a very readable discussion of how U.S. law handles fraud in the inducement in such cases here, written by Richard Posner. It starts just before page 1352.
No, Raghav, there is in my view racism even under what you envision, for racism does not require both sides of a categorical divide to be racist. One could suppose every black forced to the back of the bus to be non-racist, yet that forcing is a racist act sanctioned in law. The racism is not in the individual obeying or enforcing the law (well, it might be there too) but in the law itself.
In the present sex case, the Israeli Supreme Court has sanctioned racism by allowing a lower court to hold that the Jewish women is acting in ordinary circumstance in her disgust of intercourse with an Arab. The ISC of course has not addressed the case directly. I would like to know if the ISC could reach a view that the Basic Law of Israel, coupled with the ISC’s evolved paths of common (“judge made”) law decisions, could ban race as a legal category.
It should not, in my view, be a question of fraud in inducement as such, but rather a judicial refusal to allow the tool of race in crying fraud.
Thanks for your analysis of the ISC case, as people like me would otherwise have no idea of what was said. And thanks as well for the Posner site, of which I knew not. Nor did I know that Judge Posner is well known for ” his deep affection for most members of the animal kingdom” (from the “About Richard Posner” page at the site). That’s a lot of animals, and a greater heart than mine. I now have this site on my favorites list.
Trained in German law I could not imagine how this court decision was at all possible.
Reading your comments helped a bit to clarify the legal and political implications.
Who will help the convicted man – already punished irretrievably?
Abhorrent, I agree. And how about the giant liquor ads that cover entire building facades, featuring the copy at the very bottom: “Drink responsibly” — in English only? How many teens’ll tune that one out?
Forget about the alcohol, it just numbs the pain. I am more concerned about the blog post from Yam Erez about the sex case. Nuremberg-type laws– or legal rulings– are a very serious matter in the history of a nation-state. The animating factor here is not the sex, it’s the despised ethnicity of the poser and his fradulent claim to be a member of a different ethnicity. Sure there are outcries. But the ruling of even a single court suggests that Ya’acov Crow laws– and attitudes– have penetrated very, very deep. Doesn’t anyone see that it’s going to be very hard to turn this around?
Yes, this outsider does. I recall seeing adds on buses with Israeli and Palestinian flags joined in the late 90’s. The second intifada has really changed public opinion in Israel. And racism or ethnic exclusion takes on an economic necessity once adequately grown. This is why, elsewhere on this blog, I suggested that a two state solution cannot be motivated (ok, should not be motivated) by a call to preserving the Jewish character of the State. There are too many Arabs already for that to be compatible with equal protection.
Civil rights battles differ by State (e.g., the US, South Africa, Israel). I suspect Israel’s battle will tell us something new about social organization and the law through the upcoming battle. You will need Arabs in alignment with you to get there. But I don’t know how to get, or where there will actually be.
What a stupid woman! I mean this obnoxious Yam Erez blogger, not the alleged “rape” victim. One of the ugliest American imports to Israel is the practice of recklessly firing the charge of “racist” or “bigot”, because you know there’s never any penalty for false accusations. We see this kind of thing from Americanized Israelis like Gideon Levy here as well. I think it’s pretty disgusting.
“Show me a Jew in the same situation who would be thus detained,” asks Erez in her “would be” proof by imagination. Well, show me a Jew in the same situation who wasn’t thus detained – I mean in fact, not in Erez’s imagination. This Erez woman is accusing a real, flesh-and-blood person, a person with a name – Tzvi Segal – of a moral failing based on nothing more than her imagination of what this real person “would” have done in a hypothetical situation she imagines. Does she know Mr. Segal personally? How much does she know about his other rulings? About his character?
To Mr. Watzman: I’m not familiar with halakhah, but isn’t there some principle or something that one should give people the benefit of the doubt before accusing them in public? I also think this ruling is ridiculous, or if it’s valid then the law is ridiculous. But it’s quite plausible that the Tzvi Segal would have applied the same principles if the ethnicities were reversed.
Aaron, I commented on the information given me, i.e., Judge Segal’s ruling. I’m not required to investigate his background, personality, or how he treats stray animals. I didn’t accuse him of a moral failing, I “accused” him of issuing an argument for his ruling with which I disagree. Isn’t that what discourse is about?
This was an accusation of racism/bigotry specifically against Tzvi Segal:
You also accused the ones who “detained” the defendant of racism (“Show me a Jew in the same situation…”). You’re right, you (and Haim Watzman) are not required to do anything before calling someone a racist. Contrary to what you wrote, you do use the term lightly. The accusation itself is proof of your virtue, whether it turns out to be true or false. If it turns out to false, and you’ve libeled a judge or police officer who’s not racist, well, no harm, no foul.
Aaron,
The halakhic concept you’re searching for may be “dan lekaf zchut”. For various reasons, it’s unlikely to apply here.
Yam Erez can obviously speak for herself, but I’m not sure she was referring to what Judge Segal himself would have done if the mirror-image situation had presented itself. (Which it won’t, for a host of reasons. How many Jewish men could convincingly fake being an Arab?) In fact, there does seem to be a colorable legal basis for the decision, in that Israeli law apparently doesn’t recognize the American distinction between fraud in the inducement and fraud in fact: the Haaretz article I read mentioned the case of one Oren ben Avraham, who falsely told a woman he was a neurosurgeon.
What I think people are objecting to is the fact that the law here is ridiculously overbroad and therefore bound to be applied in ways that reflect societal prejudices. (Erez used the words “racism” and “bigotry,” not “racist” or “bigot.”) It’s still speculating, sure, but people speculate about society and its hegemonic ideology all the time. (Look at U.S. conservatives who asked what would happen to a congregant of a white Jeremiah Wright.) I haven’t lived in Israel for more than a year at a time, so I’ll fight the urge to join in the speculation, but it seems plausible. Mr. Ben Avraham, for instance, was just convicted of fraud, not rape.
I’m not a big fan of the “imagine what would happen if the situations were reversed” line of argumentation, either… it never convinces anyone but the converted. But it’s not the same as saying Tsvi Segal is history’s greatest monster or whatever.
Sexual intercourse (even within marriage) is not a contract in law. Sex must induce as many lies as war. If I said I was a Jew who believed just as you (oh hopeful bed partner) while actually having no beliefs on Judaism at all, would this not have to flame as high an outrage as some want in the present case?
Society rests on social control. This rather absurd case ignites controversy because it touches, just barely, core forms of control within Israel. Do you not think that the majority Justices in the separate but equal decision of Plessy v Ferguson (US Supreme Court, 1896) thought themselves unbiased? People enjoy being with their own kind; as long as accomodations are equal, the law may enforce seggregation. But they weren’t equal, at all, even though many were yelling otherwise for some 80 years.
Racism or ethnic exclusion are structural. The issue is not what this judge decided, but the legal causes invoked. In the 1950’s American South, you couldn’t get a all white jury (the only kind there were, basically) to convict a white of a serious crime against blacks–one reason for the Federal Civil Rights Act in the 60’s, which created Federal crimes with possible removal to another locale for trial.
It is patently absurd to think that a nation which has undergone as much as Israel has, with many of its citizens still calling the foundation of the State a “catastrophe,” does not exhibit structural racism. Of course it does, as would I if so living. Can charges of racism go too far? Of course they can, and still do, over here in the ugly US. But going too far does not imply present harm does not exist.
Those interested can read this post by Moshe Greenblatt discussing the law and a Supreme Court case interpreting it. Even though he was writing in February, he anticipates this very scenario.
Aside from the reality that Arabs and Jews are related genetically and that there really are no races or pure races this seems to me a simple case not of low level fraud which happens daily- of which there is an element, and which I assume occurs normally in sexual matters, but about the state of Israel, on the part of the judiciary, ruling as though miscegenation were the law. I can’t read Hebrew so I don’t know Greenblatt’s arguments ( maybe Ragav can say) but this seems to be about Jews not mixing with Arabs, a taboo, and it’s not surprising that this issue moves into the legal arena because it seems culturally to be what is happening now.
Suzanne,
First, a correction: his name is actually Goldblatt. Somehow I saw “Goldblatt” and two seconds later typed “Greenblatt.”
Briefly, it turns out that Israeli law considers as rape sex “with the consent of the woman, which was achieved with fraud concerning the identity of the actor or the nature of the deed.” Apparently the law dates to English times (perhaps motivated by fishermen coming home to their villages in the dark, he jokes), and Goldblatt hadn’t seen any case where it was applied until a 2008 Supreme Court case (where a man named Tzvi Sleiman apparently told women he slept with that he worked for Bituach Leumi—the National Insurance—and promised them apartments and other perks). He speculates as to what sorts of mistakes could qualify: A supposedly married man who’s actually single? An ostensible fighter pilot and successful businessman who’s actually a postal clerk? A Jew who actually turns out to be an Arab?
The court basically says that that section of the law is implicated where the woman wouldn’t agree to sleep with the man under “ordinary” circumstances if she knew the facts. It acknowledges that there will be edge cases, and quotes Potter Stewart’s dictum about pornography: “I know it when I see it.”
As I said, there seems to be a colorable basis for the decision. But what a stupid, stupid law. If it were enforced regularly against ordinary Israelis, I’m sure it would have been repealed by now.*
* Not an accusation of personal racial animus against Israeli citizens, Knesset members, or any of the other persons of unimpeachable integrity who run Israeli society and live in daily fear of being called racists by blog commenters.
Raghav, thanks- you say there seems to be a colorable basis for the decision- meaning seemingly valid ( but not?) Again I am at a loss re your link, not reading the Hebrew. I don’t know what the law ( I assume a secular law covering all citizens)) actually says but applying it selectively and only in this case practically requires a comment about state sponsored racism, making it illegal to mix. If that is not the case then it must be illegal to simply lie or for anyone to misrepresent themselves in any interaction.
That the woman would have sex so easily, and also be responsible, of course we don’t talk about. that leaves me wondering if an Arab woman, in a reverse situation could have the law so applied. I think not.
Can you imagine the overcrowding in prison if every guy who claimed to be single/divorced/in love/interested in marriage was put in jail for deceiving?
I can’t wait till they start putting people in jail for adultery!
Some sexual lies are or should be criminal, such as when someone omits telling a sexual partner that s/he has HIV. And, generally, I believe lies can be an assault, and I can conceive of them doing significant damge in the arena of sex. And it is too often indeed an arena.
By imprisoning this Arab, the State asserts that hiding his ethnicity is an assault, not as horrible as HIV, perhaps, but as real. The underlying issue is whether the State should sanction pyschological damage based solely on race. In the US in the 1940s and 50s some house deeds had a proviso that the buyer could not, in the future, sell to another which jeopardizes the ethnic character of the community; mostly, don’t sell to blacks. The Supreme Court declared such clauses unenforcible as repugnant to the 14th Amendment. Objective damages were greater than in the present case, as then selling to a black could indeed depress local property value. Not all damages (such as declined property value do to prejudice) are open to remedy if the remedy is seen to hurt others more (those wanting to buy houses in such areas).
This Israeli court has sanctioned racial exclusion by allowing criminal punishment. Racial exclusion will most certainly not be limited to this kind of case. Perhaps it will become a watershed case before the Israeli Supreme Court (if your law can evolve to strike down such things).
Clearly, your society continuously provides pivots for change. Someone has to do it, though.
Gregory,
Right. The test the Israeli Supreme Court came up with asks what the victim would agree to under “ordinary” circumstances, which explicitly calls for a contextual inquiry. If ordinary circumstances for a Jewish Israeli means “no Arabs,” but not vice versa, then you wouldn’t be able to find a Jew in the same situation who would be detained, just as Yam Erez says. No disgusting accusations of racism against real, flesh-and-blood persons needed.
There’s a very readable discussion of how U.S. law handles fraud in the inducement in such cases here, written by Richard Posner. It starts just before page 1352.
No, Raghav, there is in my view racism even under what you envision, for racism does not require both sides of a categorical divide to be racist. One could suppose every black forced to the back of the bus to be non-racist, yet that forcing is a racist act sanctioned in law. The racism is not in the individual obeying or enforcing the law (well, it might be there too) but in the law itself.
In the present sex case, the Israeli Supreme Court has sanctioned racism by allowing a lower court to hold that the Jewish women is acting in ordinary circumstance in her disgust of intercourse with an Arab. The ISC of course has not addressed the case directly. I would like to know if the ISC could reach a view that the Basic Law of Israel, coupled with the ISC’s evolved paths of common (“judge made”) law decisions, could ban race as a legal category.
It should not, in my view, be a question of fraud in inducement as such, but rather a judicial refusal to allow the tool of race in crying fraud.
Thanks for your analysis of the ISC case, as people like me would otherwise have no idea of what was said. And thanks as well for the Posner site, of which I knew not. Nor did I know that Judge Posner is well known for ” his deep affection for most members of the animal kingdom” (from the “About Richard Posner” page at the site). That’s a lot of animals, and a greater heart than mine. I now have this site on my favorites list.
Trained in German law I could not imagine how this court decision was at all possible.
Reading your comments helped a bit to clarify the legal and political implications.
Who will help the convicted man – already punished irretrievably?