Regardless of these “revelations” we were right to defend the Arab convicted for having sex with a Jew
The zionists are crowing. Some months back many of us were rightly outraged when Israeli Arab Sabbar Kashour was imprisoned for “rape by deception”. According to the charges under which he was was punished, he had enjoyed consensual sex, but had failed to disclose his Arab ethnicity to the woman concerned.
Anyway a few days back Haaretz revealed the testimony of his alleged victim. It can be viewed in this article and is pretty grim reading. Woman b had in fact claimed that it was a violent non-consensual rape had occurred. The charge of rape by deception was agreed to as part of a plea bargain.
All of which means that supporters of Israel are now crowing: for the likes of Harry’s Place and the terminally stupid Miriam Shaviv in the Jewish Chronicle, the revlation of woman B’s testimony prove that Sabbar Kashour was not the victim of racism, and that the liberal media got it very wrong in defending him.
Except, we who condemned his imprisonent still got it right. Woman B’s testimony is harrowing. But the justness of a prison sentence can only depend upon what has been proven – or confessed to – in a court of law, not what may have taken place. It was morally objectionable to deprive a man of his liberty on the grounds of what the court had established. And the unproven testimony of a witness – even if it suggests some truly ugly acts – cannot legitimize Kashour’s sentence unleashed that testimony itself were tested in court. The fact remains that the judges went out of their way to justify a custodial sentence for nothing more than what Kashour had admitted – having sex without declaring that he was an Arab.
ON a final note, Miriam Maariv in the Jewish Chronicle contends that the plea bargain was accepted to have the alleged victim from the trauma of cross examination – lending weight to the idea that Kashour got off likely. In fact -as the Israeli newspaper article that broke these new revelations makes clear – the original charge of violent non-consensual rape were not pursued in court because of the alleged victim’s “confused and contradictory testimony”. In other words the evidence before the court wasn’t sufficient to justify imprisoning Kashour for a real crime.
