More people claimed to have filed charges of assault and sexual abuse by the co-founder and chairman of the voluntary emergency ZAKA, amid allegations that the alleged attacks were commonly known in some parts of the ultra-Orthodox community.
The police were scheduled on Sunday to begin examining several charges against Yehuda Meshi-Zahav, but will have to find a viable case within the statute of limitations, according to media reports.
The investigation begins when more light is shed on allegations that Meshi-Zahav’s behavior has been known for years in the ultra-Orthodox community, but a code of silence has been maintained.
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Meshi-Zahav is a prominent figure in the ultra-Orthodox community, with ZAKA being the majority of Israel’s emergency response services at home and abroad. Earlier this month, he was announced as the winner of the prestigious Israel Prize, but on Friday he said he was giving up on the prize.
ZAKA co-founder Yehuda Meshi-Zahav speaks at a conference in Jerusalem, March 7, 2021. (Yonatan Sindel / Flash90)
He was initially charged on Thursday with sexual assault, rape and abuse by six people in a report in the Haaretz newspaper. The charges against Meshi-Zahav were made by men and women, some of whom were minors at the time of the alleged events.
Shana Aaronson, director general of Magen, told Army Radio on Sunday that his organization, a nonprofit organization working to support survivors of sexual abuse, heard rumors about Meshi-Zahav a few years ago, but “there was no one prepared to talk about what happened. Only a few months ago, we started to obtain specific testimonies ”.
Tzviki Fleishman, a senior investigator at Magen, told public broadcaster Kan that the organization has received more than six new claims.
“We need to clarify them,” said Fleishman. “The rumors about him were also known to us years ago, but there was nothing concrete to work with.”
A woman identified only as Tal told the news site Ynet that Meshi-Zahav caused her parents’ divorce after he sexually exploited his mother. Tal said that Meshi-Zahav later also made advances for her.
Police officers patrol Jerusalem’s ultra-Orthodox Mea Shearim neighborhood on July 5, 2020. (Yonatan Sindel / Flash90)
Tal said his family lived in the ultra-Orthodox neighborhood of Mea Shearim in Jerusalem and his mother, who was 20 at the time of her second pregnancy, became depressed and Meshi-Zahav took advantage of her mental state, Tal said.
“Behind my father’s back [Meshi-Zahav] made her his sex slave, ”she said, adding that Meshi-Zahav took advantage of her mother for several months.
“One day, my father came home unexpectedly and picked them up together, and from there it led to divorce. Yehuda separated our family, ”said Tal, who ended up leaving the ultra-Orthodox community at age 12.
A few years later, she found Meshi-Zahav in a store on Jaffa Street in Jerusalem, near ZAKA’s headquarters.
According to Tal, when Meshi-Zahav recognized her, he said, “Maybe you will come to my office and I will get to know you more closely as I met your mother?”
After leaving the store in shame, she yelled at Meshi-Zahav again, she said.
At the time, a friend of hers who had also left the religious community worked at the store. Tal said that after the confrontation with Meshi-Zahav, the friend one day approached her in tears and said that he had just arrived from Meshi-Zahav’s office and that Chief ZAKA touched him inappropriately and “forced him to do things “in exchange for the NIS 100 (approximately $ 30).
Another friend of hers told her that Meshi-Zahav had proposed to her a large cash payment if he could see her commit an act of bestiality, Tal said.
“The man is a pervert,” said Tal, and recalled that, after learning that Meshi-Zahav would receive the Israel Prize, she began to “tremble”.
“It brought things back to me,” she said. “I’m crying, but I’m happy that in the end everything is going out.”
Tal estimated that Meshi-Zahav’s abuse affected thousands of people.
ZAKA Chief Rabbi Yehuda Meshi-Zahav on February 4, 2010. (Yaakov Naumi / Flash90)
“He didn’t stop at all,” she said. “He went for everything. He’s a crazy man. “
Tal said that after posting on Facebook about her experiences, she was contacted by dozens of others who claimed to have been abused, including ZAKA employees.
She said that although she told everyone to make complaints, they said they did not feel able to do so.
“They don’t want to deal with it right now,” she said.
So far, since Haaretz’s initial report last week, no one has complained to the police, Ynet reported.
Illustrative: A ZAKA van and volunteers at the scene of an accident in Beit Shemesh, January 18, 2018. (Yaakov Lederman / Flash90)
Yaakov, described as a close friend of Meshi-Zahav, told Ynet that he had heard about allegations of abuse for a long time. Although he never witnessed an incident himself, he said the rumors were well known, and a friend said that Meshi-Zahav had tried to have sex with him.
“People say he is a big pervert,” said Yaakov. “I remember we laughed about it that he would even make a cat in a skirt.”
He said Meshi-Zahav acquaintances reported that they had warned Chief ZAKA against running for the Knesset because his past would surface.
“But they didn’t think it would be released when he won the Israel Prize,” said Yaakov. “He didn’t believe it himself.”
Yaakov estimated that by giving up the prize, Meshi-Zahav was showing his guilt and that more cases would be known.
He predicted that in the next few days there will be more and more people arriving.
“When there is a buzz in the media, people really realize that he did things that the average person doesn’t do,” he said.
Yaakov claimed that Meshi-Zahav was able to avoid the police investigation for so long because he would help the force in other cases by providing information.
There were also others who now claim that Meshi-Zahav behaved inappropriately.
Frieda Goldstein, 29, told Ynet when she was 18 when she received sexual messages from Meshi-Zahav. She said that Meshi-Zahav asked to meet her, but she refused, although she was curious as to why he wanted to see her.
“When I said I didn’t want to meet him, he started to describe what he would do when we met. He wrote, ‘I’m going to put it on a table and then come at you from behind’ ”.
Goldstein said that, as an ultra-Orthodox girl, she was shocked by the message. When she told others about it, “everyone told me that he is a pervert and that he is involved with underage girls. No one was surprised. “
Another woman, Noga Tal, told Ynet that her grandparents lived near Meshi-Zahav and that she would visit them as a child. She said she heard rumors at the time about those who were assaulted by the man “but in the ultra-Orthodox community these incidents were swept under the rug”.
Of the six allegations reported by Haaretz, the oldest is from 1983 and the last from 2011. The report added that many residents of several ultra-Orthodox neighborhoods in Jerusalem were aware of Meshi-Zahav’s actions, but said nothing or reported it to the authorities.
One victim said that Meshi-Zahav repeatedly abused him when he was a teenager, only realizing years later that he was his “escort, a prostitute in the full sense of the word,” he told Haaretz.
Meshi-Zahav also made headlines in January, when his parents died of COVID-19 a few days apart and less than a month after his younger brother died for a different cause.
He was a vocal critic of some ultra-Orthodox leaders during the pandemic, as some prominent figures in the community minimized the virus, including in an October interview with The Times of Israel.