First public admission of ritualistic child abuse in Israel's religious-Zionist sector sparks national reckoning

[IwantToRetire]

Israeli Settler Council Issues Unprecedented Admission of Ritualistic Child Sexual Abuse After Broadcaster Exposes Cover-Up

The Gush Etzion Regional Council in the Israeli-occupied West Bank has publicly admitted that ritualistic sexual abuse of children occurred within its communities, a confession that marks the first time a governing body in Israel's religious-Zionist settler sector has broken ranks with years of denial.

The extraordinary statement came on 27 May 2026 in direct response to a broadcast by Israeli public broadcaster Kan 11, whose investigative programme 'Zman Emet' aired accounts from five women, most of whom did not know each other, who described virtually identical patterns of multi-perpetrator ritualistic sexual abuse in the same geographic areas.

The admission did not materialise in isolation. It is the culmination of more than a year of survivor testimony, Knesset hearings, rabbinical warnings, and police investigations that have shaken Israeli society to its core, forcing a reckoning within the country's religious communities over decades of alleged institutional silence.

Full article https://www.ibtimes.co.uk/gush-etzion-council-admits-ritualistic-child-abuse-1799642

I think this is from what has been an ongoing public inquiry (starting last year?)

https://www.timesofisrael.com/horrifying-testimonies-seek-to-lift-shroud-of-silence-around-ritual-sex-abuse-claims/

https://www.jfeed.com/news-israel/shoshana-strook-ritual-abuse-survivors

But not sure if it is linked to this:

Hasidic sect in northern Israel churns out child brides and conceals sex abuse — report
https://www.timesofisrael.com/hasidic-sect-in-yavneel-churns-out-child-brides-and-covers-up-sex-abuse-report/

Sadly it seems whatever country, whatever religion, child sex abuse happens all too often.

And even if for the survivors of this abuse, it feels it has taken too long for the inquiry to happen, at least it is now being acknowledged.

for all the brave survivors who have felt able to come forward.

Unsurprising. Religious community structure gives men plausible deniability and the social enforcement to get away with anything. The wife is the alibi. The trusty "good, religious" male friends. The congregation is the suppression mechanism. Hypocrisy is a feature not a bug of Abrahamic religion and women bare the cost. I wish everyone who keeps saying we need to "return to tradition" would ask what tradition costs women who live in it.

Why is this on this board? Personally I'm always instinctively suspicious of the actual motives of people posting any provocative content about Israel here. I'm not denying the veracity of claims, just the motive for posting them.

Perhaps the OP wants this news to spread to a wider audience; I hadn’t heard of this abuse before now. But this aside, the days of Israel being the innocent are well over.

Way to go to prove the PP's suspicions of there being an ulterior agenda for some here.

Agreeing with every word.

What board should it be on? One less read?
You think we should not talk about how disturbing this is because it happens to take place in Israel?

How is the agenda ulterior? It seems pretty exterior to me, and completely defensible. I was not aware of this, now I am. Do you think any sharing of negative information about Israel is propaganda even when it's true?

in a culture that mandates circumcision, I really struggle to see how this is in anyway illuminating anything that we didn't already know.

Because abuse by a religious organisation is not abuse by the country - clerical child abuse in Ireland is not cited as evidence of the Irish government's moral failings, despite there being plenty of evidence of active and passive complicity from the government (there has still not been any significant pay out from the catholic church to victims, largely thanks to the government and justice system's complicity; I can only think of one criminal conviction leading to jail time, Fr Brendan Smyth, and that was as a result of police action in NORTHERN Ireland)

Similarly, clerical abuse by Church of England clergy isn't used as proof of how bad England in general is, even though the C of E literally has bishops in the House of Lords.

When only Israel is treated differently, when a sex abuse scandal in a religious cult in Israel is brought in to back up the claim that "the days of Israel being the innocent are well over" then it's perfectly logical to say that something else is going on there. You think that's ok - but that jkust means you share that agenda, otherwise you'd see how hypocritical it is to blame a whoel country for the failings of a religion, when in fact the evidence is that it's religions that are the problem. Or maybe just men.

Is this linked?

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cnv3291z9p2o

I have no ulterior agenda. I wrote my honest thoughts and beliefs. I don’t want or need to hide.

So why do you think a "Hasidic sect in northern Israel" has anything whatsoever to do with "the days of Israel being the innocent are well over"?

If someone came onto a thread about clerical child abuse in Ireland to say that "the days of Ireland being the innocent victim (of the British) are well over", would you think that was a reasonable link to make?

Can't see how it would be. Lev Tahor are spectacularly anti-Zionist and a hugely isolated fringe group. They'd be ideologically and religiously very different from Religious Zionists.

After October 7th, did you say the days of Palestine being the innocent are over?

If not, your double standards show your racist prejudice.

It's the state of Israel that's conducting the public enquiry! Abuse of the vulnerable by closed religious sects is a worldwide problem, and every state needs to be aware, and able to detect and put a stop to it. Some states don't even care about abuse of girls, but Israel isn't one of them.

I see. It stuck in my mind when I read it because of the CSA element.

Also, the allegations are all (unsurprisingly) about extremist ultra orthodox sects, who are often anti zionist and who don't serve in the army. So you'd expect that people who think Israelis are all to blame for the IDF's actions would not be using these people as a metonym for Israel - and yet here they are doing exactly that.

Because the truth is, it's anything against Jews. Saying that they're not antisemitic but are objecting to zionists or to people serving in the IDF is only a figleaf. It's actually anything they can use to blame Israel for. Even Haredis who are non zionists can be used for that, it seems. Because they're all Jews, and that's the real issue. Despite the pretence that it's about the IDF etc etc.

Well said. The police in Israel opened this investigation. We haven't even had the recently (well I say recent, quite a long time ago now) promised grooming gangs enquiry here yet. Let alone a police investigation into how the grooming gangs were supported and enabled by institutions including the police over the years.

It does say in the article that the police in Israel have not always been brilliant, and alleges cover ups, but at least something is happening now and there are clearly parts of the police wanting to expose this abuse, UNLIKE in the UK.

Israel seems to be doing better than the UK in terms of the police supporting survivors' voices being heard.

It happens frequently in non-religious communities as well (e.g. schools and sports clubs). The modern western move towards eliminating structured community as much as possible is probably quite effective in reducing sexual abuse of this sort, but comes with all kinds of massive downsides of its own.

It's not just religious communities but it is definitely more common in them I would think. If ever there's a dispute the whole community seems to defer to the men. I've seen it with different religious friends. I sometimes envy that that have more kids and the kids have more cousins but when I see what they have to put up with it's just not my cup of tea. The patriarchy is basically cosmically ordained so if a woman wants to leave her abusive husband or if she accuses him of cheating he can just say "she's mentally unstable" and that's it it's a wrap it's official.

I think Israel has more sense than to allow large enclaves of foreign communities to grow there. That seems to be more of a Christian heritage thing.

Israel as a State seemed to have acted on this much like many nations including the UK do on sexual abuse scandals - way to late and with too little real effort to root out and prosecute the people responsible or to halt the continuation anywhere else.

I don't think it's true that sex abuse scandals in the Catholic Church were not cited as signs of the Irish Government's abysmal attitude towards women, nor that the UK's various scandals have not been continually raised on these boards as evidence of misogyny and corruption in government here.

This is very much the right place for this thread.