Palestinian Convicted of “Deceit Rape” After Lying About Being Jewish

A Palestinian man was convicted of rape after having consensual sex with a Jewish woman who believed he was Jewish as well.

Thirty year-old Sabbar Kashur met the woman in downtown Jerusalem in September 2008, introducing himself as a single Jew. Later that night they had sex. When the woman discovered he was actually Arab, she filed a criminal complaint for rape and indecent assault, later changing it to rape by deception through a plea bargain.

Kashur argues, “I would say she set upon me. She was interested in my motorcycle and so we talked. I didn’t pretend. I said my name is Dudu because that’s how everybody knows me. My wife even calls me that.”

Still, for almost two years Kashur has been under house arrest.

On Monday, the judges sentenced Kashur to eighteen months in jail. While they acknowledged it was not a “a classical rape by force,” they argued, “If she hadn’t thought the accused was a Jewish bachelor interested in a serious romantic relationship, she would not have cooperated…The court is obliged to protect the public interest from sophisticated, smooth-tongued criminals who can deceive innocent victims at an unbearable price – the sanctity of their bodies and souls.”

This is not the first time an Israeli court has convicted a person of rape by deception. Al-Jazeera reports that in 2008, Israel’s High Court of Justice convicted a man who impersonated a housing ministry official and promised women apartments in exchange for sex.

Abeer Baker, an attorney for the Arab rights group Adalah, claims the recent verdict is based on discrimination, arguing, “The ruling seems to say that if a ‘reasonable’ Jewish woman knew a man was an Arab, then she would not make love to him.”

In addition, Israeli commentator Gideon Levy asks, “What if this guy had been a Jew who pretended to be a Muslim and had sex with a Muslim woman? Would he have been convicted of rape? The answer is: of course not.”

Elkana Laist of the Public Defender’s Office argues that the verdict sets a dangerous precedent. “Every time the court thinks a reasonable woman would not have had sex with a man based on that representation, the man will be charged with rape.”

On the other hand, Dana Pugach, head of the Noga Center for Victims of Crime, argues, “We all have different characteristics, and it is a person’s right to have sexual relations with a person knowing the facts about those characteristics.”

Read more: discrimination, human rights, israel, palestine, rape

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Disclaimer: The views expressed above are solely those of the author and may not reflect those of
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Ian T.

5:40PM PST on Jan 6, 2011

Thank you, Kurt Klingbeil, for being supportive efforts to get to the heart of the matter:

http://www.mideastyouth.com/2010/09/05/israel-rape-by-deception-turns-out-to-be-brutal-rape-of-a-vulnerable-and-abused-woman/

It's really disgusting that for some people rape is okay when the victim is a.) Jewish, and b.) too emotionally damaged to speak up for herself due to a well-documented history of having been sexually abused.

send a green star

Eug F.

6:13AM PST on Jan 2, 2011

Looks like Dudu is in alot of dodo. It is a nice bike though.

6:11AM PST on Jan 2, 2011

This is too funny to be taken seriously. I mean at any time in consensual sex a woman can change her mind and decide its rape? Wow. But the Palestinian couldnt have been too bright either...it must have been the foreskin that gave him away. Its a mad mad mad world out there.

Helen S.

2:02AM PST on Jan 2, 2011

There seems to be some questions with regards to the facts of this case, and one person has written that new evidence shows there was a real rape. However, to have a law which says that you can be convicted of rape if you lied about yourself, is ridiculous. If it's true that she consented, then this man has been very unjustly treated. He may be a bastard, cheating on his wife and lying to this woman to get her into bed, but should that be a crime? She sounds like a racist as she liked him enough to sleep with him after just meeting him, but when she found out he was an Arab, she accuses him of rape. If she wanted to sue him in a civil suit, fine, but it shouldn't be a criminal act. I'm appalled that such a law should exist. After all women are adults and should take responsibility for their own actions. Perhaps one should wait longer to sleep with someone, get to know them first. I've been with more than a few men who lied about themselves, and were married. If we had such a law, I could claim rape, and how ridiculous would that be. These are personal matters and should not be criminal ones. I say get over it and move on, and if there really was a real rape then she should have been brave enough to say so in the first place.

kurt k.

10:42AM PST on Dec 31, 2010

OOPS, ran out of room due to longwindedness...

I reiterate that the most intelligent and caring post was by Ian T. in which he posted this link:

http://www.mideastyouth.com/2010/09/05/israel-rape-by-deception-turns-out-to-be-brutal-rape-of-a-vulnerable-and-abused-woman/

I directly and personally challenge and double-dog-dare everyone, especially the most vociferous/righteous opiners, to read that information and examine your heart to see whether your "position" may have changed in any way.

Consider it a kind of self-administered relevance litmus test.

If you can sense that your position has changed in some way, I invite you to post an update which reflects and summarizes that. I believe you demonstrate an active capacity for Care-ing and healing your own crunchinesses.

If you honestly believe that your original position/comments are still unalterably RIGHT, I acknowledge your contribution of teaching by counterexample.

10:26AM PST on Dec 31, 2010

I feel multiply-saddened for having wandered into this, and express this only as a means of not allowing the residue to fully remain within me.

I will continue to advocate for Care2 and my naive aspiration that people are drawn here for some higher purpose than launching off onto tangents projecting and venting their unresolved personal issues, with full and unrestricted extrapolation and interpolation of real and imaginary "facts", onto whomever, with little regard for the effects...

Then I thought, "Oh lighten up, it's kinda like a therapy rap session..." but it quickly occurred to me that it isn't therapy at all to simply re-spew, yet again, one of YOUR (or MY) trauma-induced storylines calcified within YOUR (or MY) bodymind, this time with new costume and scenery adapted from the latest little info-bite YOU (or I) came across.
There might be some healing possible if we all do our best to not just "Aha! I knew it! Well, blahblahblah to you!!!" reactivity thing. Knowing that all of our expressions are going to be tinged, to a lesser or greater degree, by our calcified, non-objective states, if we look for some some way in which the expressions of others can colour/shift/change/reverse our own "position" (anything except strengthen, make us feel ever MORE right) - especially when we don't have direct first-hand intimacy with the situation - then we open ourselves to healing.

@Ian T. The most intelligent and Care-ing post by far was by Ian T. I challenge you all

5:36AM PDT on Oct 11, 2010

Laurence B.: You are repeating a lies that also happen to be irrelevant to the article in question.

"israel is made up of a group of disenfranchised europeans intent upon upsetting their new neighbours."

Most of Israel's population at it's founding were Mizrahi Jews-- and thus indigenous to the Middle East, many of whom, like the Sephardic Jews of North Africa were fleeing ethnic cleansing from Arab-speaking countries.

In fact, the number of Jewish refugees from the Arab-Israeli conflict greatly out-number the number of Palestinian-Arab refugees.

Secondly, it was the neighbors who invaded Israel in 1948, 1967, and 1973, or fired missiles into Israel 1982, 1991, 2006, and 2008 and thus initiated their conflicts. In most cases, the same neighbors that ethnically cleansed their Jewish populations in previous years.

Laurence B.

8:55AM PDT on Oct 2, 2010

it's obvious, give them enough rope. like the usa, israel is made up of a group of disenfranchised europeans intent upon upsetting their new neighbours. but neither of these 'countries' represent the world. the world is getting along forming alianses, whilst these two behave abysmally whilst condemning the rest

8:13AM PDT on Sep 8, 2010

Natasha G., do you intend to put forward a correction now that the news broke that the deceit rape charge was actually a plea-bargain in a case where the the physical evidence was of a violent rape but the woman was a woman with prior history of being sexually abused (she had been living at a shelter at the time) and thus not considered able to testify in court?

Because now that the police testimony has been made public, it looks more like a rape survivor is being exploited by people with a political agenda.

Jewels S.

6:19PM PDT on Sep 7, 2010

Antonio wrote:

everybody lies --- men and women, here and abroad and so on; don't kid yourself. It's not going to end because that's -how people are (men and women both), and teenage pregnancy isn't going to stop unless kids are well educated about sex and get plenty of exercise and/or masturbate a lot. The sex drive is supposedly higher in the teens than later on You really should get the idea that girls and women aren't in there and pitching, too. You're very idealistic, or very young, I think. But the world doesn't work that way."

This is your opinion. Which I don't give much creedance to when you don't show a profile. You can say that something is impossible while someone else is out making it happen. Here is all I have to say about anyone telling me that "that is just the way it is"

"Impossible is just a big word thrown around by small men who find it easier to live in the world they've been given than to explore the power they have to change it. Impossible is not a fact. It's an opinion. Impossible is not a declaration. It's a dare. Impossible is potential. Impossible is temporary. Impossible is nothing."