The co-founder and chairman of the ZAKA group for emergency volunteers arrived at the police headquarters for serious crimes unannounced on Monday and was dismissed because he wanted to deny numerous accusations against him of rape and other sexual abuse.
Officers at the Serious Crime Unit in Lahav 433, which on Sunday launched an investigation into claims against Yehuda Meshi-Zahav, who has been returning for decades, refused to testify because he was still summoned for questioning.
Meshi-Zahav was accused on Thursday of six people of sexual assault, rape and abuse in a report by the Haaretz, which states that there are probably many more cases.
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The allegations against Meshi-Zahav were made by men and women, some of whom were minors during the alleged events.
Meshi-Zahav’s lawyer, Ephraim Dimri, said on Monday that his client, in order to prove his own innocence, ” started the unusual step and submitted himself to Lahav 433. He has nothing to hide. ‘
General view of the headquarters of the Lahav 443 police in the city of Lod on November 4, 2019. (Flash90 / File)
A source in the self-described “modest patrol” told the Ynet news website that the allegations against Meshi-Zahav were known in the ultra-Orthodox neighborhood of Mea Shearim in Jerusalem.
“What has been published is just the tip of the iceberg,” the activist said, adding that Meshi-Zahav was “the Haredi Jeffrey Epstein.”
Informal ‘modest patrols’ are known to operate in ultra-Orthodox neighborhoods and towns to enforce a strict reading of Jewish views on modesty and decency – sometimes violent.
The activist of the “modest patrol” said that the application of Meshi-Zahav eventually failed and that the plan was to simply castrate him.
A number of patrolmen broke into an apartment where he did what he did, and caught him in the act – but Meshi-Zahav managed to slip away. “He was so close to it that he was beaten to a pulp where circumcision is performed,” the source said.
On Monday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu made his first statement on the sex scandal, telling Army Radio that the alleged incidents were “terrible things. I hope this is not true. This is unacceptable. ”
Police on Sunday began investigating allegations of sexual assault and ill-treatment against Meshi-Zahav and will have to find a viable case within the statute of limitations. Police will focus on searching for complainants from the past decade, as cases outside the period are considered “cold cases”, Channel 12 reported.
Meshi-Zahav is a prominent figure in the ultra-Orthodox community, with ZAKA a large part of Israel’s emergency response services abroad.
The original Haaretz report said that Meshi-Zahav used his status, power, money and even the organization he stands for to commit sexual assault on several occasions.
One alleged victim said he forcibly pulled her out and raped her after offering financial aid. The woman said that when Meshi-Zahav forced himself on her, he threatened: “If you talk, a ZAKA jeep will chase you.”
Illustrative: A ZAKA minibus and volunteers at the scene of an accident in Beit Shemesh, 18 January 2018. (Yaakov Lederman / Flash90)
Another said that Meshi-Zahav repeatedly abused him when he was a teenager, and only years later realized that he was the man’s’ escort ‘, a prostitute in the full sense of the word,’ he said. told Haaretz.
According to the report, several other women testified that he masturbated in front of them and touched them sexually.
Meshi-Zahav denied the allegations and told the newspaper that the allegations were “unfounded” and that his good name would cause “irreversible damage”.
Of the six allegations reported, the earliest are from 1983, and the latest from 2011. The report added that many residents of several ultra-Orthodox neighborhoods in Jerusalem knew of Meshi-Zahav’s actions, but said nothing or to the authorities have not been reported.
Earlier this month, Meshi-Zahav was declared a winner of the Israel Life Prize for his contributions to Israeli society. Education Minister Yoav Gallant has announced that the award goes to Meshi-Zahav for his decades of work at ZAKA. In 2003, he lit a torch during Israel’s national Independence Day celebrations.
On Friday, Meshi-Zahav announced that he would resign from his role in ZAKA and also relinquish the coveted Israel Prize.
Meshi-Zahav also made headlines in January when his parents both died of COVID-19 within days and less than a month after his younger brother died in another case.
He was an outspoken critic of some of the ultra-Orthodox leadership during the pandemic, as some prominent community figures downplayed the virus, including in an interview with The Times of Israel in October.
