JERUSALEM – Lying for sex. It happens all the time.
Yet a married Palestinian man has been ordered jailed
for 18 months for having sex with an Israeli woman after giving her the
impression he too was Jewish, as well as single and interested in a
relationship.
His conviction of “rape by deception” has drawn
charges of racism and questions about whether courts should be delving
into this fraught topic.
Saber Qashor, a 30-year-old father of two, says he
was approached by the woman in September 2008 on a downtown Jerusalem
street where he had parked his motorcycle, and introduced himself as
“Dudu,” a common Israeli Jewish nickname.
Within half an hour they were having sex in a Jerusalem office building stairwell.
After nearly two months, he was arrested and told the
woman had accused him of forcible rape. Last week, he was sentenced to
prison and fined 10,000 shekels ($2,500) for “rape by deception,” an
offense that may be unique to the Israeli legal code.
Rape by deception was written into the law to protect
women from sexual predators, but some argue that Qashor’s act doesn’t
count — that he was simply doing what so many men and women do for sex.
“It seems to me a dangerous decision,” said Professor
Zeev Segal, legal analyst for the Israeli newspaper Haaretz. “The law
should… >>>
