28 Jewish News
www.jewishnews.co.uk
10 September 2020
World News / Extradition probe / Trump criticised / Court sanctions
Anger over Leifer failures Campaigners against child sexual abuse have called for a major review of how a Jewish former headteacher in Australia charged with 74 counts of indecent assault and rape evaded extradition for more than a decade. It follows a decision from the Supreme Court of Israel rejecting an appeal from Malka Leifer not to be expedited. Leifer fled to Israel from Australia in 2008, just hours before she was due to be arrested for sexually assaulting students at her Orthodox Adass Israel girls’ school. For more than a decade, her lawyers have delayed extradition proceedings with arguments over psychiatric assessments, but earlier this year she was found to have been “faking” the mental illness she claimed to have. Manny Waks, who was himself sexually abused as a child in an Australian yeshiva, said Leifer had “taken Israeli justice for a major ride” for years, and that the Supreme Court’s unanimous rejection still left room for her to appeal.
Malka Leifer, charged on 74 counts, is led into court
“It means Leifer can continue to face the extradition trial,” read a statement from the Kol v’Oz organisation he now heads from Israel. “Currently, we are awaiting the District Court decision on 21 September regarding whether she will be extradited based on the facts of the case. Leifer will still have opportunities for appeal.”
PROSECUTOR SANCTIONED The US has imposed sanctions on the chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC) after she allowed a complaint of Israeli “war crimes” to proceed. Announcing sanctions against the Fatou Bensouda, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said the court “continues to target Americans”, in apparent reference to investigations into US Army actions in Afghanistan. He also announced sanctions against Phakiso Mochochoko, an ICC director, calling the pair “specially designated nationals” – a phrase usually used for terrorists. Fatou Bensouda
The US opposes the court’s scrutiny of alleged Israeli crimes against Palestinians, even though its investigation is also looking at alleged abuses carried out by Palestinian security forces. No US allies have supported its stance. The ICC described the US sanctions against two senior court officials as “coercive acts” that were “unprecedented”. It added: “They constitute serious attacks against the court…and the rule of law more generally.” The ICC is an international tribunal with 123 members that sits in The Hague and considers charges against those accused of war crimes, crimes against humanity, genocide and aggression. Israel is not a member, but ‘the state of Palestine’ joined in 2015, quickly filing a complaint alleging “crimes” committed by Israel.
Trump’s contempt is ‘shocking’ Prof pretended to be black A senior Jewish representative in Washington, DC, has described the contempt with which Donald Trump’s administration holds the US Congress as “shocking”. Rori Kramer, the former Deputy Assistant Secretary of State in the bureau of legislative affairs who is now director of US advocacy at the American Jewish World Service,
was speaking after Democrats said US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo had misused state funds by make a political address during the Republican national convention from Jerusalem. Pompeo, who has made a habit of offending US allies, is refusing to comply with congressional subpoenas for documents connected
to the Ukraine scandal that led to Trump’s impeachment. “It’s really shocking,” said Kramer. “Four years ago, it would have been completely bizarro Twilight Zone that Congress could subpoena you and hold you in contempt, and the answer of the administration would be ‘I don’t care’. It’s a race to the bottom.”
A history professor who revealed she had fabricated a black cultural identity grew up attending a Jewish day school and an Orthodox synagogue. George Washington University academic Jessica Krug admitted she had “eschewed my lived experience as a white Jewish child in suburban Kansas City under various assumed identities within a blackness that I had no right
to claim: first north African blackness, then US rooted blackness, then Caribbean rooted Bronx blackness.” She added: “You should absolutely cancel me, and I absolutely cancel myself.” Krug attended a school called Hyman Brand Hebrew Academy and her family belonged to Congregation Ohev Sholom in a suburb of Kansas.