Our thanks to Geoff for this. The start of the piece:
A 12-year-long battle by activists for men’s rights and family values was capped with success Wednesday, when the Justice Ministry published a revised version of its infamous Prosecution Instruction 2.5, which effectively gave women a free pass to file false charges of violence and sexual abuse against men.
The instruction was initially formulated by then-State Attorney Dorit Beinisch, and was modified by her successor, Edna Arbel, in the early 2000s. Its somewhat elaborate title is: “Policy regarding launching investigation and filing charges on suspicion of giving false or contradictory statements or testimony during an investigation or trial, and for refusal to testify.”
The problematic nature of the instruction was exposed in a journalistic article in 2004 which gained widespread attention and, over the years, the Israeli juristic world has come to see it as allowing women’s perjury against men to go unpunished.
The end of the piece:
This last clause is especially meaningful for men in divorce battles, who are arrested and distanced from their homes and children as a matter of course through the tactical use of false accusations.
Some men’s activists took to calling the instruction, in its previous form, the Wife of Potiphar Clause, after the famous Biblical Egyptian noblewoman who caused Joseph the Righteous to go to jail by falsely accusing him of attempted rape.
Israel has been rocked for many years by scandals involving women’s accusations against men in positions of power. It remains to be seen what effect, if any, the new instruction will have on this dynamic.
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