Today’s Ha’aretz reports on the just-released transcripts of the accuser’s testimony, in which the accuser testified that Kashur had forcibly raped her. (David Bernsten blogged a month ago about earlier press reports to the same effect, but these seem to be the first ones based on the actual testimony.) Apparently the indictment was later revised to rape-by-fraud pursuant to a plea bargain, apparently partly because of “the desire to spare [her] the trauma of taking the witness stand a second time, which would have been necessary had the case continued in court” and partly because of a worry about whether the accuser would be seen as credible. And, if the translation of the court decision that I have is correct, the witness actually testified “that [the defendant’s actions] were perpetrated with her consent but that [the consent] was acquired fraudulently in that she relied on his false representation. Specifically: had she not thought that the defendant was a Jewish bachelor who was interested in a serious romantic relationship, she would not have cooperated with him.”
So, as is often the case, it’s hard to tell what actually happened between Kashur (the person) and the accused. But Kashur (the court opinion) stands for the proposition that the facts, as recited in the opinion, constitute the crime of rape by fraud — not that surprising, given the Saliman decision that seems to be the leading Israeli precedent on rape by fraud (which did not involve lies about ethnicity, or other Palestinian-Jewish tensions), and given the cases that the decision cited. In many respects (though of course not all respects) that legal judgment is more important than the particular factual dispute in this case.