Seeking to deny numerous accusations against him of rape and other sexual abuse, the co-founder and chairman of the voluntary emergency response group ZAKA arrived uninvited to police headquarters for serious crimes on Monday, and was rejected.
Police officers at the Lahav 433 serious crime unit, which on Sunday opened an investigation into complaints against Yehuda Meshi-Zahav decades ago, refused to receive testimony from him, as he had not yet been summoned for questioning.
Meshi-Zahav was accused Thursday of sexual assault, rape and abuse by six people in a report by the Haaretz newspaper, which said there are likely to be many other cases.
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The allegations against Meshi-Zahav were made by men and women, some of whom were minors at the time of the alleged events.
Meshi-Zahav’s lawyer, Ephraim Dimri, said on Monday that his client, to demonstrate his own innocence, “started the unusual movement and presented himself for questioning at Lahav 433. He has nothing to hide.”
General view of the headquarters of the Lahav 443 police unit in the city of Lod on November 4, 2019. (Flash90 / Archive)
A source from the self-styled “modesty patrol” told the news site Ynet that the charges against Meshi-Zahav were well known in Mea Shearim’s ultra-Orthodox neighborhood of Jerusalem.
“What was published is just the tip of the iceberg,” said the activist, adding that Meshi-Zahav was “Haredi Jeffrey Epstein”.
Informal “modesty patrols” are known to operate in ultra-Orthodox neighborhoods and cities to impose – sometimes with violence – a strict reading of Jewish views on modesty and decorum.
The “modesty patrol” activist said that, in Meshi-Zahav’s case, enforcement failed and that “the plan was simply to castrate him.”
“Several members of the patrol broke into an apartment where he did what he did and caught him in the act – but Meshi-Zahav managed to escape. He was so close to being beaten to a pulp where circumcision is performed, ”said the source.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu made his first statement on Monday about the sex scandal, telling Army Radio that the alleged incidents are “terrible things. I hope this is not true. This is unacceptable.”
Police began investigating the sexual assault and abuse charges against Meshi-Zahav on Sunday, and will have to find a viable case within the statute of limitations. The police will focus on the search for whistleblowers over the past decade, as cases beyond that period are considered “archived cases,” reported Channel 12.
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.
The original Haaretz report said that Meshi-Zahav took advantage of his status, power, money and even the organization he runs to commit sexual assault on several occasions.
An alleged victim said he forcibly stripped and raped her after offering financial aid. The woman said that when Meshi-Zahav forced her, he threatened: “If you speak, a ZAKA jeep will run you over.”
Illustrative: A ZAKA van and volunteers at the scene of an accident in Beit Shemesh, January 18, 2018. (Yaakov Lederman / Flash90)
Another said that Meshi-Zahav repeatedly abused him when he was a teenager, only realizing years later that he had been “the escort, a prostitute in the full sense of the word,” he told Haaretz.
The report said that several other women testified that he masturbated in front of them and touched them sexually.
Meshi-Zahav denied the accusations, telling the newspaper that the allegations “are unfounded” and will cause “irrevocable damage” to his good name.
Of the six allegations reported, the first 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.
Earlier this month, Meshi-Zahav was declared the winner of the award for the entire Israel Prize work for his contributions to Israeli society. Education Minister Yoav Gallant announced that the award would go to Meshi-Zahav for his decades of work at ZAKA. In 2003, he lit a torch at Israel’s national Independence Day celebrations.
On Friday, Meshi-Zahav announced that he was leaving his position at ZAKA and also giving up the prestigious Israel Prize.
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 played down the virus, including in an October interview with The Times of Israel.
