Prison Guard Sex Scandal in Israel Turns Out Not to be Quite So Lurid After All

The first reports were titillating, scandalous, highly embarrassing for the state of Israel and a source of great satisfaction to the Palestinians. According to these reports, it appeared that several female guards in a security wing of an Israeli prison were so smitten with an imprisoned terrorist that they were willingly having sexual relations with him. The narrative for the Arabs was clear: an alluring, handsome Muslim, much more of a real man than any Jew could be, had made his female guards — who were sexually loose, such a contrast to modest and chaste Muslim women — into a veritable harem, taking his pleasure as he wished. More on this story can be found here: “Israeli prison guard was sexually assaulted by jailed terrorist, lawyer says,” by Michael Starr, Jerusalem Post, October 1, 2023:

The prison guard conscript who was reported to had intimate relations with a terrorist inmate did not have a consensual relationship with the prisoner and was threatened into allowing abuse, her legal representative Yair Ochayon told The Jerusalem Post on Sunday morning.

Contrary to Israeli media reports that surfaced Friday that the conscript had admitted to a consensual relationship to investigators, Ochayon said that the terrorist had threatened to “hurt her and her family, and to ruin her life.” He said that she had been consistent in her testimony and had not changed her story significantly, and had also told this to investigators.

So this we know: whatever happened between the female guard and the male prisoner, it was not “consensual.” He threatened that if she were to report him, he had two ways to harm her. First, he could contact his friends on the outside to hurt members of her family. Second, he could “ruin her life” by spreading stories about her supposed eagerness to have sexual relations with him.

The terrorist had assaulted the woman, but they did not have sexual relations, he [the guard’s lawyer] clarified. The guard was a victim, and she was not under house arrest as some had reported.

Now the original story has been modified. First, there was only one female guard involved, not several, as had earlier been reported. Second, that lone guard has maintained since the beginning that she was assaulted physically by the guard — i.e., grabbed and hit — but neither willingly, nor forcibly, did she have sexual relations of any kind with him, as she has maintained since the beginning. It was a sensationalist press that misreported the story, and that her lawyer has now corrected. Instead of being an alluring Sheikh of Araby, with the beckoning bedroom eyes of Rudolf Valentino, the prisoner was simply a repulsive bully who, having physically — not sexually — assaulted the girl, threatened that if she reported him, he had ways to harm her family. He only needed to get the word to his Palestinian friends on the outside, asking them to retaliate against her by attacking her family members. She was right to be worried.

IDF sources noted that the woman was not a soldier as some outlets had reported, but a conscript serving with the Israel Prison Service.

An investigation by police internal investigations and is ongoing, but details about it and the subjects’ identities are under a gag order. Israeli media reported Friday that more guards are suspected of relationships with the terrorist.

As of September 30, there were reports in the press that more guards were “suspected” of relationships” — not necessarily sexual relations — with that prisoner. But we have had no further information since then. This still needs to be sorted out.

The terrorist was transferred to solitary confinement on Friday, and may be subjected to additional restrictions when he is returned to the general population, the IPS said.

That transfer tells us nothing about what went on between the prisoner and the female guard; he would have been put in solitary confinement after any assault on a guard, sexual or otherwise, both to keep him away from her, while the incident was being investigated and, of course, as punishment as well.

National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir said on Friday that the policy to remove female mandatory service prison guards from security wings is to be accelerated. He said that this was part of a process that he had pursued since he had taken office almost nine months ago. On Saturday his office said that IPS is set to remove the guards within a week to ten days.

“It is about a systematic and ongoing event that can’t be suffered any more,” Ben-Gvir said Friday. “Exploitation of female prison guards by damned terrorists and illicit connections is not a situation that will be possible on my watch.”

Ben-Gvir should have waited to find out the facts before speaking. Those “illicit connections” imply a sexual relationship, one which the guard in question categorically denies.

Again, this policy of removing female prison guards from security wings — where the most violent prisoners are kept — has been in the making for many months. And it is not necessarily a response to any sexual intimacy between a prisoner and his female guard; it is enough that a single female guard was physically assaulted by one such prisoner, who then threatened to harm her family if she reported him.

When the dust settles, I think the true story, while still disturbing, will not be the lurid tale of a willing harem of Israeli guards sexually servicing an irresistible Palestinian Sheik of Araby — a tale that some have been so willing to believe. That there was a physical assault is not denied by the guard in question — which I take to mean the prisoner punched or slapped her, or wrenched her arm, and it is most plausible that the terrorist threatened to have others on the outside harm her family members if she reported him. Beyond that, we have the word of the prison guard that the assault was non-sexual, against the word of the prisoner who, of course, has claimed there was no beating, but only “consensual sexual relations.” And that makes him a hero to the Palestinians for what is regarded, in a “shame” culture, as humiliating Jewish girls in the worst possible way.