The very idea of rape by deception is utterly indefensible; for the idea trivializes the very wrong of rape. Here is the story. In Israel, a Palestinian man by the name of Sabbar Kashur presented himself as a Jew to a woman who is a Jew. Later that evening, the two then went on to have consensual sex in a nearby building. The woman later discovered that Kashur is Palestinian and files a legal suit against him; and an Israeli court ruled that she was a victim of “rape by deception”. He is to receive a jail term of 18 months in prison.
Had she been deceived? Well, it goes without saying that she had been. Had she been in anyway raped? Absolutely not. And the fact that an Israeli court ruled that she had been “raped by deception” reveals none other than a deep, deep bias on the part of court, since the idea of “rape by deception” is in fact incoherent. To the question “Did Kashur commit a wrong?,” the answer is obviously: Yes. Did he in anyway rape the women, it is just as obvious that the answer is: No.
By definition, rape involves the absence of consent; and we do not have the absence of consent on the part of either individual. Worse, we do not even have a deep and systematic form of deception on the part of Kashur. That is, while it is certainly true that he deceived her on that fateful evening, what we manifestly do not have here is a case where Kashur had constructed a complete façade in order to deceive her, which brings me to a quite significant point: Sometimes the fact that we have been deceived tells us as much that is negative about ourselves as it does about the person who deceived us.
The woman charges that she would never have been interested in Kashur had he not claimed that he is a Jewish bachelor looking for a serious relationship. Presumably, the point here is that she, too, was looking for a serious relationship. And therein lies the problem with her very own behavior and her very own story.
I would not expect any person looking for a serious relationship with someone of her or his religious-ethnic background to have sex on the very first night with someone whom she meets. A man who really wants a woman to know that he takes her seriously—as opposed to just looking for a night of sex—would surely not be so inclined. And unless this Israeli woman has just arrived here on this planet—which of course is not the case—she surely knows this. So the fact that she did have sex with Kashur on the very occasion that she met him tells us something quite significant and less than positive about her. More to the point, her very behavior belies her claim that having a serious relationship is one of her priorities. For the judges not to have been mindful of this universal truth underscores the point that they were rather bias in their judgment against Kashur.
The article does not specify where exactly the two met except downtown Jerusalem. However, it is difficult to imagine a context (where the two would have met for the very first time) that would change anything that I have said in the preceding paragraph. Certainly, their meeting in a synagogue for the first time would not be such a context. And if they met in a bar, the point of the preceding paragraph is all the more applicable.
Then there is the following reality. Given that the sex was completely consensual, then it unmistakably follows that she gave Kashur certain indications that she was interested in having sex with him. It is difficult imagine a woman looking for a serious relationship so behaving upon her very first meeting with a man. Indeed, it is difficult to imagine a man looking for a serious relationship wanting a woman so to behave.
In her famous essay “Moral Beliefs, Philippa Foot makes the poignant observation that if person is too easily tempted to do what is unjust that the person is not just after all. This point applies to countless other contexts outside of justice. If intellectual acumen in a woman is really important to me, then I should not be dating the first women whom I encounter if I am clueless regarding her intellectual wherewithal. Again, if I am deeply committed to eating wholesome meals, then my meal of choice cannot be a meal that one obtains at a fast-food chain. Finally, if I really have no interest in spending lots of money on a car, then it should not turn out that a Mercedes Benz is the car that I typically purchase. And so on.
From a public relations standpoint, the court’s ruling merely reinforces the view, held by many, that Israel is grossly unfair in its treatment of Palestinians. Indeed, the paper known as The Guardian uses the story of the court’s ruling to make just this point.
There was no rape. There was deception. However, it was the kind of deception that only a fool falls for in the first place. And that fact is what makes the court’s ruling so utterly despicable. There was no history of Kashur cultivating a public image that in point of fact disguises who he really is. Say, he regularly attend a synagogue and gives the pretense of being Jewish and then he strikes up a romantic relationship with one of the women in the synagogue, only to have her discover by accident that he is Palestinian. That would have been a horrendous form of betrayal on his part.
Instead, he lied about being Jewish. He might have lied about his education or his employment. And the women might have been just as gullible.
Alas, Gideon Levy very powerfully brings out the folly of the court’s ruling. If Kashur had in fact been a Jew, but pretended to be a Muslim in order to have sex with a Muslim woman, would he have been convicted of rape if the Muslim woman found this out and reported him? The answer, of course, is: Surely not. With the case of Kashur, what we have is none other than a miscarriage of justice committed by an Israeli court.
