The 2019 Gang Rape of a British Woman by Israelis in Cyprus
In July 2019 British and Israeli media outlets were abuzz with reports that twelve Israeli men and male teenagers – ranging from 15-18 – had been arrested on suspicion of gang-raping a 19-year-old non-jewish British woman by police in the party town of Ayia Napa on Cyprus. (1)
Then something strange happened after the parents and lawyers for the twelve Israeli jews flew out and Israeli diplomats had also visited them; the suspects immediately began claiming they’d been ‘beaten’ by the Cypriot police (2) and at least one claimed they’d all had their noses broken by them. (3)
Naturally no evidence of such physical abuse was ever actually presented.
The British woman was then subjected to a gruelling seven to eight hours straight of interrogation by the local police. No lawyer for her was present and nor was the interviewed recorded. (4) Under heavy police pressure she retracted her initial statement that she had been raped and ten days later signed a statement to this effect as well as declaring that the sexual intercourse had been consensual. (5)
The Israelis were then promptly released by Cypriot authorities and flown back to Israel as well as given a heroes’ welcome by family, friends and many Israelis.
To quote the ‘Daily Telegraph’:
‘After their release the Israeli men, mostly in their teens, flew home to a heroes’ welcome, drinking champagne and chanting “the Brit is a whore.”’ (6)
The ‘Times of Israel’:
‘The accused Israelis, aged 15 to 18, were initially arrested in the case but later released without charge. They returned home to a heroes’ welcome when they arrived back in Israel, sporting yarmulkes, with well-wishers opening champagne bottles and chanting “Am Yisrael Chai” (the people of Israel lives) along with “the Brit is a whore.”’ (7)
And Jenni Frazer also writing in the ‘Times of Israel’:
‘Twelve of them were arrested initially and then released, returning to Tel Aviv to cavort about the airport with their families, whooping and cheering, wearing white kippot and dancing under a hail of confetti. These were the “heroes” of Ayia Napa, never properly questioned by the Cyprus police and, at a minimum, not even obliged to take part in a line-up so that they might be identified – or not – by their British accuser.’ (8)
Clearly something was wrong with this picture given the open displays of jewish supremacism and the strange police investigation that led to the non-jewish victim quickly retracting her rape claim.
Then it got even weirder; the British woman was charged, tried and convicted for ‘public mischief’ a few months later for the ‘false rape claim’. (9)
The trial itself was by all accounts an absolute travesty with none of the Israeli jews being called to give evidence, (10) the judge bizarrely claiming bruising and injuries on the British woman’s body -congruent with her being gang raped - were ‘jellyfish stings’ (11) and also dismissing evidence from qualified linguists that her written retraction of the rape claim was almost certainly not written by her as it was clearly written by non-native English speaker and certainly not one conversant in British English rather than American English. (12)
In other words: the retraction was likely been written by a Cypriot police officer and she was coerced into signing it.
It is perhaps helpful to reproduce two graphics published by ‘The Sun’ at the time to explain these last two points.
These are the British woman’s injuries: (13)
These injuries/bruises are clearly those of a woman being held down by her legs – hence the injuries there – and having her body pushed down hard onto the floor as her head held in place. They aren’t normal injuries that one would sustain from some other activity/accident nor are they ‘jellyfish stings.’
Further support for the rape thesis was easily obtainable in the form of the British woman’s friends who testified that immediately after the incident:
‘“She was in such a traumatic state and like crying and bruises all over her body, like it was a horrible sight,” the friend said. “We finally got her in the police car and she literally just curled in a ball with her head on my lap crying her eyes out.”’ (14)
This is supported by further testimony that:
‘A British man claimed to have seen Emily surrounded by the group of Israeli men shortly after the incident.
“One of them had his arms over her shoulders as if to pull her close and the two were almost standing either side of her so she had nowhere to move,” the man said. “She was crying.”’ (15)
Put another way: we’ve got the marks on her body consistent with a gang-rape scenario, we’ve got the fact that she was seen surrounded by her attackers - a common intimidation tactic – shortly after the alleged gang rape happened while ‘crying’ by an unrelated British man and is believed to have been running from them before being surrounded. (16)
Adding to that we have the extremely dubious written retraction which ‘The Sun’s’ graphic explains rather well: (17)
This is pretty conclusive as I far as I can see – particularly the use of American term ‘apartment’ (spelled incorrectly) rather than the British ‘flat’ or more appropriately ‘hotel room’ – and it is thus clear that the written retraction was not written by the British woman and likely by a Cypriot police officer in that unrecorded seven-hour/eight-hour interrogation or after it which the British woman was forced to sign. Hence her quick retraction of the written retraction afterwards. (18)
So obviously was the trial a sham that the British Foreign Office more or less stated as much (19) and an attempt by the ‘Jerusalem Post’ to play down the events by claiming the British woman would be ‘pardoned’ by the President of Cyprus was unsuccessful. (20) That in January 2022 the trial verdict and her conviction were completely quashed by the Supreme Court of Cyprus (21) probably due to extended pressure from the British government to review the case honestly and transparently.
But that leaves the question about what actually happened both between the British woman and the Israelis as well as when the Israeli officials, lawyers and parents showed up.
Well, we actually have a good idea about what happened between the woman and the Israeli men since have a pretty comprehensive account of it from the victim which fits with the facts and the timeline:
‘Her interaction with the group of Israelis began several days before the alleged rape, she said. She was having drinks with four or five girls at their Ayia Napa hotel when a group of about 20 Israelis approached them.
“They were drinking designer vodka, clearly trying to impress us,” the woman told the Mail.
Among the young men was one nicknamed Sam, who struck up a conversation with the accuser. While she was initially hesitant, as he seemed “possessive,” she said she was happy at the opportunity to have a “holiday fling.”
“On the first day of our holiday romance he was confessing his love for me, telling all his friends how he wanted to marry me and asking me to move to Israel. I wondered if it was Israeli culture to be like that, but it was odd,” she said.
The two of them got intimate several times thereafter, but the woman was quickly made uncomfortable by Sam’s friends who “always seemed desperate to burst into the room when she and Sam were together.”
Four days after they met and on the day Sam, 21, was slated to fly back to Israel, the alleged rape took place. “It was definitely pre-meditated,” she told the Mail.
Describing the night in question, she said the two of them began kissing in his hotel room. “Then everything changed. I remember seeing light from under the door and a group of Sam’s Israeli friends came in. They were shouting and jeering.
“He was shouting in Hebrew to his Israeli friends and they were jumping around laughing. I was in distress. I shouted, ‘No! Get out! No!’ I tried to cross my legs.”
“Then Sam was kneeling on my chest and he began to rape me orally, so I could hardly breathe. My arms were flailing. I was trying desperately to get away. Then Sam got annoyed. He grabbed my left knee and pinned it down so I was accessible.”
“I couldn’t see what was happening. Sam was in the way. Then other lads got hold of my ankles and they took turns to rape me. And then I managed to pull myself out. I scrabbled across the floor, pulled on my shorts and grabbed my bag.”
She went on to describe how she slipped and hit her head while fleeing the scene. She rushed to a friend of hers and told her she’d been attacks, she said.’ (22)
This also fits with the ‘Daily Mail’s’ version of the events:
‘The British teenager has never denied that the sex she had with the boy she had been messaging was initially consensual. It was on a visit to his room on another night, three days later, however, that she claims his drunken friends burst in and took it in turns to sexually assault her while holding her down.
According to her original account of the attack: ‘I told them they had to go. My boyfriend told me to lie on the bed and . . . put his knees on my shoulders. There was a lot of shouting in Hebrew. I couldn’t breathe. I tried to throw my head about and his friends were coming in all shouting and jeering. I tried to cross my legs. I was trying to throw my arms about. I don’t know how many of them raped me. I couldn’t see.’
A grainy sex recording from the night of the alleged attack was also leaked to the Israeli media. It reportedly shows one Israeli telling the girl in Hebrew, ‘You’re my wh**e. Say you’re my wh**e.’ When she asks what he is saying, another boy replies: ‘We are saying you’re sexy.’ The teen, who fled in tears, was taken to a 24-hour clinic next door to the hotel and the police were called. A friend who was with her that night subsequently told the Mail: ‘She was in tears and just so distressed. She said they took it in turns and it was all of them. They held her down. When I saw her she was covered with bruises.’ (23)
As well as the one from the ‘Times of Israel’:
‘“[He] kind of pushed me back onto the bed. Got his knees onto my shoulders,” she said, referring to the man she originally had a consensual relationship with. “I couldn’t breathe the whole time. It was a mess. The way they were all kind of standing in a line. I was trying to cross my legs and throw my arms around.
“He pulled my knee up and pinned it down so I couldn’t cross my legs. So all of the other boys could help themselves, I guess,” she said, saying the alleged attack lasted about 20 minutes.
“There was this moment where I remember gasping for air and I was like ‘if I don’t get out now, I’m not going to get out’,” she said. “I was running away and I was aware they were running after me.”’ (24)
In other words: the British woman got talking to one of the Israelis, naively believed him when he told her that he ‘loved her’, had sex with him at least once before the gang rape and in general showed a lack of good judgment (possibly under the influence of alcohol and/or other substances). We can and should rightly and strongly criticise her for that, but she was very young and apparently a bit stupid and/or naïve to be taken in with the Israeli man’s patter.
It is however clear that there was a plan on the Israelis part to have group sex with her which they appear to have assumed she would have been okay with because she wasn’t a jewess and thus a ‘shiksa’ (basically a blonde non-jewish slut/whore in jewish culture) given reports of the conversation of the Israeli men before the incident. (25)
Then when they’d gang-raped her in what sounds like – from the ‘Daily Mail’s’ first-hand description of it anyway – a seedy cheap hotel room. (26) She escaped and ran off crying at which point the Israelis knew what was likely going to happen next and immediately tried to coerce and intimidate her into not reporting them for having gang raped her; hence the British man’s witness report of them doing just that.
Then when she reported them and arrested them the Israeli government rapidly swung into action to get them out of trouble, but how do we know this?
Well one of the Israelis who gang raped the British woman is ‘the son of a senior aide to Jerusalem Mayor Moshe Lion’ (27) and they ‘had friends in high places.’ (28) While the principal suspect – and the man the British woman believed was her ‘boyfriend’ – was/is an Israeli football player:
‘Shimon Yusufov, an injury-plagued, aspiring professional soccer player. In this 2018 media profile, he tells the interviewer that after suffering a series of injuries he was hoping to return to form by playing for Beitar Jerusalem. This team, by the way, is known for being the most Islamophobic and racist in all of Israeli soccer.’ (29)
With all the known participants (who weren’t minors at the time) being revealed as: (30)
Shimon Yusufov
Yisrael David
Eliran Yitzhak Bar
Ophir Avisrour
Guy Natan
Ofek Biton
Yair Yitzhak Ayubi
But why would Cyprus listen to a senior advisor of Moshe Lion’s?
Well Jenni Frazer writing for the ‘Times of Israel’ explains in a roundabout way what likely happened:
‘A number of theories have been advanced as to quite why the Cyprus police were so anxious to have the British woman retract her statement about the rape: some say it is because Ayia Napa is so dependent on the vast numbers of sun, sangria and sex tourists that they can’t afford to have such an allegation associated with the resort.
Others say the political pressure comes from higher up. Observant readers may have noticed that last week, before cutting short his break to deal with the fall-out from the Soleimani assassination, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu signed a three-way energy deal with the governments of Greece and Cyprus, for Israeli gas to be delivered to Europe via an undersea pipeline. What could possibly put the mockers on such an arrangement? Twelve Israeli men on trial in Cyprus is a credible bet.’ (31)
With the ‘Daily Mail’ explaining the connection between Lion and the gas pipeline more fully:
‘Concerns have been raised too that the accused teenagers’ families have connections with the Israeli establishment which, in turn, has close strategic and commercial ties to the government in Nicosia.
The father of one of the boys is a close adviser to Moshe Leon, the mayor of Jerusalem. The Israeli minister for ‘regional co-operation’ has said that he too is close friends with the parents of two of the boys. On Thursday, just days after the teen’s guilty verdict was delivered, the leaders of Cyprus and Israel met to sign a billion-dollar gas ‘EastMed’ pipeline deal in Athens, further emphasising their close ties.
Cypriot police have already been forced to deny claims that they dragged the retraction out of the teenager because they were under pressure to protect Cyprus’s multi-billion pound tourism industry and its good relations with Israel.’ (32)
And Israeli journalist Richard Silverstein confirming:
‘I want to raise another possibility for which I currently have no supporting evidence. Israel and Cyprus have close relations. They are both developing oil and gas fields in the Mediterranean. There have been business deals between Israelis and Cypriots and government-to-government negotiations about how to proceed in developing these lucrative properties. Neither side would want an incident such as this to sour relations. Given Netanyahu’s proclivity to make under the table deals (many of them corrupt) with everyone and his brother, it’s entirely within the realm of possibility that such an arrangement was negotiated to resolve this case.’ (33)
In summary then the Israeli government threatened the Cypriot government with not going forward with the ‘EastMed’ gas pipeline deal if they didn’t make the gang rape case against the Israeli men ‘go away’ which is exactly what they tried to do but because of the ham-fisted cover up by the Cypriot police and judiciary as well as Ayia Napa being a prominent location for partygoing British tourists; it attracted too much attention from the British government who appear to have gotten to the bottom of it in finding out that the British woman’s allegation of gang-rape was true and that it was a bad attempt at a cover up by the Israeli government.
All that remains is to state that if this were any state other than Israel then Cyprus – with Britain’s backing – would have forced the Israeli state to deliver up the Israelis for trial but because it is Israel this will not happen because of the power of jewish influence in both Cyprus and Britain.
References
(1) https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/12-israelis-arrested-in-cyprus-on-suspicion-of-gang-raping-tourist-1.7535169; https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-49021546
(2) https://www.timesofisrael.com/victim-of-alleged-israeli-gang-rape-says-suspects-were-drunk-beat-her
(3) https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/9537109/israeli-teens-accused-gang-rape-brit-woman-ayia-napa/
(4) https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7850097/How-Israel-turned-12-teenage-boys-accused-sexually-assaulting-British-girl-Cyprus.html; https://www.timesofisrael.com/5-of-12-suspects-held-in-cyprus-rape-case-released-returning-to-israel/ ; https://www.timesofisrael.com/victim-of-alleged-israeli-gang-rape-in-cyprus-had-lower-body-wounds-court-hears/
(5) https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7850097/How-Israel-turned-12-teenage-boys-accused-sexually-assaulting-British-girl-Cyprus.html
(6) https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/01/06/israelis-protest-support-british-teenager-faces-sentencing-cyprus/
(7) https://www.timesofisrael.com/british-woman-in-cyprus-rape-claim-case-appeals-to-boris-johnson-for-help/
(8) https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/israelis-in-rape-case-show-sickening-entitlement/
(9) https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7850097/How-Israel-turned-12-teenage-boys-accused-sexually-assaulting-British-girl-Cyprus.html; https://www.timesofisrael.com/uk-woman-says-cyprus-police-forced-retraction-of-israeli-gang-rape-accusation/; https://www.timesofisrael.com/its-late-sign-this-or-be-locked-up-woman-says-cyprus-forced-rape-retraction/
(10) https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/01/06/israelis-protest-support-british-teenager-faces-sentencing-cyprus/; https://www.timesofisrael.com/uk-woman-says-cyprus-police-forced-retraction-of-israeli-gang-rape-accusation/
(11) https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/10673574/israeli-men-gang-rape-brit-teen-sue-her-ayia-napa/ also https://www.timesofisrael.com/its-late-sign-this-or-be-locked-up-woman-says-cyprus-forced-rape-retraction/
(12) https://www.timesofisrael.com/british-woman-in-cyprus-rape-claim-case-appeals-to-boris-johnson-for-help/; https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/10673574/israeli-men-gang-rape-brit-teen-sue-her-ayia-napa/
(13) https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/10673574/israeli-men-gang-rape-brit-teen-sue-her-ayia-napa/
(14) https://www.timesofisrael.com/uk-woman-says-cyprus-police-forced-retraction-of-israeli-gang-rape-accusation/
(15) Ibid.
(16) Ibid.
(17) https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/10673574/israeli-men-gang-rape-brit-teen-sue-her-ayia-napa/
(18) https://www.timesofisrael.com/its-late-sign-this-or-be-locked-up-woman-says-cyprus-forced-rape-retraction/; https://www.newstatesman.com/world/2020/01/britain-israel-ayia-napa-rape-case-universal-story-feminists-worldwide
(19) https://www.timesofisrael.com/british-woman-in-cyprus-rape-claim-case-appeals-to-boris-johnson-for-help/; https://www.timesofisrael.com/its-late-sign-this-or-be-locked-up-woman-says-cyprus-forced-rape-retraction/; https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7850097/How-Israel-turned-12-teenage-boys-accused-sexually-assaulting-British-girl-Cyprus.html
(20) https://www.jpost.com/Breaking-News/UK-woman-in-Ayia-Napa-rape-case-to-be-pardoned-by-Cyprus-president-report-613304
(21) https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/jan/31/uk-woman-accused-making-up-cyprus-gang-claims-conviction-quashed
(22) https://www.timesofisrael.com/its-late-sign-this-or-be-locked-up-woman-says-cyprus-forced-rape-retraction/
(23) https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7850097/How-Israel-turned-12-teenage-boys-accused-sexually-assaulting-British-girl-Cyprus.html
(24) https://www.timesofisrael.com/uk-woman-says-cyprus-police-forced-retraction-of-israeli-gang-rape-accusation/
(25) Ibid.
(26) https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7850097/How-Israel-turned-12-teenage-boys-accused-sexually-assaulting-British-girl-Cyprus.html
(27) https://www.timesofisrael.com/british-woman-in-cyprus-rape-claim-case-appeals-to-boris-johnson-for-help/
(28) https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/cyprus-rape-case-hints-that-acquitted-israeli-boys-have-friends-in-high-places-5mmqjgsgr
(29) https://www.richardsilverstein.com/2019/07/26/breaking-israeli-teens-accused-of-raping-young-british-woman-in-cyprus-identified/
(30) Ibid.
(31) https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/israelis-in-rape-case-show-sickening-entitlement/
(32) https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7850097/How-Israel-turned-12-teenage-boys-accused-sexually-assaulting-British-girl-Cyprus.html
(33) https://www.richardsilverstein.com/2019/07/28/police-release-israel-gang-rape-suspects-arrest-woman-who-was-alleged-victim/