A thirty year old married father of two confessed in a plea bargain in a Jerusalem court to ‘rape by deception’ and received a sentence of eighteen months. This is despite the fact that he has already experienced two years of house arrest and two months of formal incarceration during the trial, says CNN.com.
Sabour Kashour is an Israeli Palestinian who admitted during his trial to deceiving an Israeli Jewish woman about his ethnic identity before they had sex.
Kashour claims that this sex was totally consensual and it was only when she found out that he was an Arab that she laid a charge against him for rape. However, her claim that she was brutally raped did not stand up in court and she later admitted the sex was consensual.
Israeli law states that if someone has sexual intercourse under false pretenses then that act can be considered as rape. Kashour confessed his total confusion as to how he could possibly face eighteen months in jail over this charge.
"If I told the woman I was a pilot and later she finds out that I was not a pilot, then she goes and says that 'He raped me'? If I told her that I was a millionaire and it turns out that I am a poor man, then she goes and says that 'He raped me'?"
Kashour and his lawyer, Adnan Aladdin, seem to believe that he has been convicted because he is an Arab in Israel and the woman involved was a Jew.
Leah Samael, a lawyer specializing in civil rights and human rights cases agrees with these suspicions. She believes that if a religious Jew, for example, had said he was not religious in order to woo a potential suitor then “"he would not be brought to court," she said.
"And I am not sure that, on this occasion, it is a reason to charge. To have intercourse in daytime in a deserted building in the center of town -- I say the circumstances speak for themselves."
However, Dana Pugach of the Noga Legal Center for Victims of Crime believes that the punishment is a legitimate fit for the crime because the conviction was not centered on his ethnicity but rather on the fact that he is married.
“Criminal law rarely applies to minor lies, like dyed hair or a changed name, but it would apply to the more meaningful lies," she said.
"For example, where a doctor persuades a woman to have sex claiming it would be a part of the medical treatment. As for this particular case, it is not the fact that he was an Arab and claimed to be Jewish. The court emphasized the fact that he claimed to be single while he was married, which would be relevant in the context of a romantic relationship."
Kashour is the second conviction on this particular charge of rape by deception, although the previous case seems far more clear-cut. In 2008, Zvi Sliman was sentenced to ten years for masquerading as an official in the Housing Ministry and promising women help and benefits if they would have intercourse with him.
Kashour will be appealing his sentence.