So Embarrassing

February 6, 2007 by · Leave a Comment
Filed under: Crime 

. . . on so many levels.

We take the good with the bad . . .

Rafi Goldmeier, himself a very religious Jew, explains how religious “zealots” in a suburb between Jerusalem and Tel Aviv are making his commute harder and harder:

For the past week or so the roads through Ramat Bet Shemesh B have been shut down sporadically.

No, there have been no roadworks going on.

The cause of the road closures are a series of violent protests going on through the neighborhood of RBS B.

The exact source of the problem is a bit unclear. You will get different details from each person you ask. But the general story is that about 10 days ago a woman from RBS B was found dead. She was in the middle of divorce proceedings and her husband had had a restraining order keeping him away from her house. The restraining order had just expired and he had come by “to see the kids”. The next thing anybody knows is that she turns up dead in the street near her place of employment (she worked in a mikva).

Some of the local zealots assumed the police would attempt to take the body for an autopsy. They repeated an act that they did a few months ago in Ashdod and stole the body away under the watchful eye of the police. This time, though, they had to use violence to run off with the body. They got a group of people to help them and they beat up the few police who had been keeping watch over the body.

Eventually the situation was cleared up. They agreed there would be no autopsy, just an external examination. the body was returned, the funeral was held and all was ok.

Then the police came and arrested a number of people. This is where it gets unclear. It is unclear whether they arrested the people involved in stealing the body, involved in beating the police, involved in planning and running the incident, or just innocent bystanders who were “watching” at one of the original protests.

Since the police arrested those people, many people from that neighborhood have been holding protests in the streets on a daily and nightly basis. They throw rocks at buses. They shove garbage bins into the street. They hurl debris at people, buses, cars and police. I understand that the police have removed all the garbage bins from the area, so now the people are going out themselves and blocking the roads.

Rest of the story, and Rafi’s comments, here.

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It can only be good for the secretaries

February 4, 2007 by · Leave a Comment
Filed under: Business, Crime, Politics 

OneJerusalem.com explains how the recent verdict against Haim Ramon is having repercussions for the average Israeli workplace:

Just a kiss? Yes, but what a kiss! The reverberations are still being felt around the Israeli media as well as political circles. Ramon’s seemingly innocent gesture (or so he thought) will be regretted forever by the man who some thought might one day even become prime minister of the State of Israel. Obviously, the three judges, two women and one man, who presided over the case didn’t think Ramon’s kiss, involving the provocative use of his tongue, was so innocent. In fact, quite the contrary!

Beginning with the political downfall of another prominent politician, Yitzchak Mordechai, sexual misconduct is beginning to become something that many Israeli men are now very much aware of and fearful of as well. Previously, such an act would have gone unnoticed and little, if any mention of it would have reached the media, let alone the general public. With Israeli President Moshe Katsav about to be indicted for a number of sex crimes, including rape, the issue of sexual harassment and misconduct is now making Israeli men, including high level managers of corporations fearful that their secretaries, telephone receptionists, and other female employees may someday “blow the whistle” on seemingly innocent gestures made in the past – perhaps even the immediate past.

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King of the Freiers

January 16, 2007 by · 4 Comments
Filed under: Crime, General 

Well, my loyal readers, I come to you with a sad admission. I, Benji Lovitt, am a freier. I’m far from the first immigrant to discuss this concept but I may be one of the few to usethe word to describe myself. For those of you living outside of Israel, in the words of fellow blogger Brian Blum, a freier is the Israeli epithet for “sucker,” someone who gets taken advantage of. For an Israeli, being a freier is the worst possible outcome of any encounter. David Bogner claims that Israelis will do anything to avoid being a freier, especially on the roads. “One of the ways this manifests itself is through the need to constantly move forward in traffic. The person at the front of the line is the clear winner… and everyone else is a freier!” As for where this cultural attitude came from, I’ll leave it to the sociologists.

My pathetic adventure began a few Fridays ago, walking home on Sheinkin Street from the shuk. The streets are always packed on Friday mornings, as people are taking advantage of valuable weekend time before things close down for Shabbat. This day was no different. As I walked down a block void of commerce (just outside this building…)

sheinkin.jpg

 …I came across a guy doing a card trick on a makeshift table, surrounded by a few people. Being that the weather was so nice and I was in the heart of the people-watching district of the city, I stopped to watch. (To any of my friends who may already screaming “Nooooo!”, I reject that you might have suffered a different fate from me were you actually in my shoes and not reading the story from the safe confines of your office cubicle.) The guy was doing the classic “follow the ace” trick and, lemme tell ya, David Copperstein he wasn’t. This guy had the sleight of hand of Dom DeLuise. The observers surrounding the table were raking in the Jewish dough. This guy, 100 shekels, that guy, 100 shekels. It was like taking bamba from a baby.

 bamba.jpg

What do you get when you cross Cheez Doodles with peanut butter?

Have you ever stood next to a hot craps table in a casino? When everyone just keeps winning and winning, and the dice are on fire? You can only stand there for so long before saying, “I GOTTA get me some of THIS!” It happened to me on a gambling trip to Lake Charles, Louisiana after college. I’m not a gambling man but when everyone around you is winning hand over fist, you simply can’t just stand there and not want in on the free money.

So I jumped into the action. The guy moved the cards around, asked me where the ace was, and I pointed to the middle card. He said, “show me your money”, presumably to make sure that I truly had what I wanted to bet. I took out my wallet, looked into it, and pulled out a 100 shekel bill. He flipped the card over, and…WHAT??? WHERE IN G-D’S NAME IS MY ACE?????? I stared at the card in shock, swallowed hard, and handed my money over to the guy, knowing immediately that something had gone horribly wrong in a very unkosher way.

No eems, vehs, or avals about it, this guy was a con. He switched cards as I was looking in my wallet. Dumbfounded, I sat down on the park bench next to two guys at a loss for words. We started talking, with me repeating “I can’ t believe it” and “what an @$$h#$%!” over and over again. When I suggested to the people next to me that I confront the guy and call him on it, they told me that I couldn’t prove anything (even while confirming that the guy cheated) and besides, I don’t know who this scum is or what he might do. Unbelievable.

When I called a friend of mine who will remain nameless, he was nice enough to let me know that I had fallen victim to the classic street con, the “three card monte.” As explained here, the lucky pedestrians who were winning left and right were in on it, and their fleeing from the scene of the crime went according to the script as well. Oh, and one more thing: he once lost $100 on the streets of New York the same way (although the guy may have used a different method of cheating.) I was further consoled by the very next person I told, who revealed that he too once fell victim to one of the classic New Orleans cons which I remember hearing as well.

What is the moral of this story? That this could only happen to a male. I’m not the most competitive person I know by a long shot, but when I saw the ability to make a quick buck, I couldn’t resist (and apparently, neither could my friends.) At least 100 shekels is only about $25, I told myself. Am I such a freier? No? Well, maybe I’m just an idiot.

Cross-posted on What War Zone???

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This Blogger Showered With Benny Sela (Ugh!)

December 11, 2006 by · Leave a Comment
Filed under: Crime 

No, really. His name is Daniel and he really did.:

I had a shower with Benny Sela! In fact I had many showers with him and others, we were standing on opposite sides naked, aged 16 or 17 in the communal boys shower in the boys quarters of the year 10 and year 11 at Alonei Itzhak in 1988 and 1989. This was normal, we had no separate showers at school and so showering in full sight was quite normal. Little did I know then, or anyone else for that matter that showering with Benny would become a moment of horror for dozens of women.

It’s the beginning of a fascinating long post full of inside knowledge of the notorious now-captured serial rapist and how his case is a failure of the Israeli social welfare system on a number of levels and his old classmate believes strongly “that his behaviour and emotional instability could been prevented or at least have been managed, had the care system functioned appropriately as it should after a child witnesses its father suicide and the rejection of his mother. It is most likely that his adult life would have been different.”

If the system had been functioning properly, if it had not been able to prevent him from becoming a violent rapist, then at least he might have been identified as a danger and he could have been apprehended before destroying so many women’s lives.

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Gotcha Benny Sela

December 10, 2006 by · Leave a Comment
Filed under: Crime 

The country breathed a sigh of relief last night with the news that after a manhunt of an unprecedented size, the infamous escaped serial rapist, Benny Sela, was arrested.

But many people, like Nominally Challenged, thought the police were patting themselves on the back a little too hard:

One of the things I found distasteful about the whole affair was the way in which it sort of absolved everyone else. All of a sudden, the country is full of angels looking for that ultimate evil: Benny Sela – unkempt, unshaven and looking menacingly at us from billboards around the country. So long as he was a fugitive, no-one was safe. Now that he has been recaptured, everything is dandy.

I heard about the recapture by word-of-mouth. I saw the police congratulating themselves for finding someone who should never have gotten lost in the first place, late last night on tv.

So the police who caught him did a good job. You can’t argue against that. Certainly, they did a much better job than the police who lost him two weeks ago to the day.

However, his recapture is nothing more than the rectification of a huge blunder. It is nothing short of simply what should have been done. There should be no parties involved, and there should be no self-congratulation. World order has not been restored.

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