Published: 1 February 2022
Last updated: 4 March 2024
IRVING WALLACH: Israel gave the ex-minister a slap on the wrists for perverting the course of justice in the Leifer case, a blatant example of Haredi exceptionalism
THE BACKWASH TO the Malka Leifer affair ought to raise more than just a ripple.
Rabbi Yaakov Litzman, the former Israeli Health Minister and Gur Hasid, has pleaded guilty to breach of trust arising out of his illegal interference in pressuring psychiatrists to produce court reports that Leifer was supposedly mentally unfit to be extradited to Australia.
A far more serious charge of obstruction of justice has been dropped and there will not be a finding of moral turpitude.
It was also agreed the prosecutors will submit to a sentencing judge that Litzman should receive a suspended sentence and a fine of NIS3,000 (about A$1,300). He will not serve any time in prison.
It is now 13 years since Leifer’s rushed return to Israel from Melbourne in 2008 in the wake of allegations that she had sexually abused students at the Adass Israel school in Melbourne while she was the school principal.
In May 2020 an Israeli court finally ruled that Leifer was mentally fit and should be extradited to Australia. She is now in custody, facing some 65 charges, with her trial expected to commence in the County Court of Victoria later this year.
Victorian prosecutors had begun extradition proceedings in 2014. Following Leifer’s arrest in Israel the process before Israeli courts was expected to be concise. It became a drawn-out process in which farce threatened to degenerate into tragedy.
At one point, Leifer was indefinitely released on bail, supposedly mentally unfit but rearrested in 2018 when videos showed her living a normal life. There followed a seemingly never-ending procession of court hearings with psychiatric reports that Leifer was unfit to be tried.
