AFP - An Israeli court's jailing on a rape charge of an Arab man it ruled had duped a Jewish woman into consensual sex by lying about his ethnicity caused a stir on Wednesday. The Jerusalem District Court "has gone too far," the liberal Haaretz daily quoted Elkana Laist of the public defender's office as saying. The court sentenced Sabbar Kashur, 30, to 18 months behind bars on Monday, after finding that he had had sex with the woman by posing as a Jewish bachelor interested in a long-term relationship. When the woman found out he was not a Jew, she filed a police complaint that led to charges of rape and indecent assault. In a plea deal, Kashur later agreed to the charge of rape by deception, Haaretz said. That's not called rape," Haaretz quoted him as saying. The newspaper noted that the Israeli High Court set a precedent for the charge of rape by deception in when it rejected an appeal against a rape conviction by a man who impersonated an housing ministry official, promising women he would get them an apartment if they slept with him. Lais argued that the Jerusalem court went too far in its application of that High Court ruling, "opening the door to a rape conviction every time a person lies regarding details of his identity.


The Atlantic Crossword
A court in Jerusalem has made international legal history by jailing Sabbar Kashur, a year-old delivery man from East Jerusalem, for 18 months. He was convicted of "rape by deception" following a criminal trial that has drawn criticism from across Israel. The court heard accusations that Mr Kashur misled the woman, whose identity has not been disclosed, by introducing himself with the traditionally Jewish name during a chance encounter on a street in central Jerusalem in
Thirty-nine-year-old Amani, a Palestinian mother of seven, is a victim of domestic abuse. As a young girl, her father would hit her. When she was 14, her father forced her to marry an Arab Israeli. Three years later, he forced me to remarry, this time to a year-old man, also from an Arab village in Israel. The ongoing cycle of abuse, humiliation, and helplessness drove Amani to attempt suicide. So I left the shelter.
Last week the court ruled on a case involving a woman who said she believed the Arab man with whom she had consensual sex a few minutes after meeting him was a Jewish bachelor interested in a serious relationship. Some Israeli commentators greeted the ruling with incredulity and dismay; some have denounced it as anti-Arab racism. Kushour does not deny that he had a one-time sexual encounter with the woman, who was identified as Maya, but he denies that he misrepresented himself as Jewish in order to sleep with her. In an interview with the British Guardian newspaper published Sunday, Kushour — who is known by the Jewish nickname Dudu, a sobriquet for David — said Maya never asked if he was Jewish and did not appear to be looking for a long-term relationship when the encounter took place in Within 15 minutes of meeting each other, the couple had consensual sex on the top of a nearby building. Kushour left the woman immediately afterward, but not before tapping her phone number into his cell phone. Maya filed a police complaint shortly after the encounter, and when Kushour called her six weeks later, she had enough contact information to have him picked up by police and confined to house arrest for the past two years. It was not the first court ruling against a man who used deceit in a sexual context, according to Haaretz.