(photo credit: Wikimedia Commons)

By Yekutiel Bornstein & Yuval Weiss

Last Updated 10/5/2019 at 8:30 PM

Jerusalem: Israel’s Deputy Health Minister Yaakov Litzman this evening gave specific details of a scenario where he would approve the extradition of accused child molester Malka Leifer to Australia. “Maybe if she voted for Lieberman.”

Ms. Leifer, a former Principal at an Australian school for religious girls, was charged with 74 counts of sexual abuse back in 2008. So the school reacted as any school would react, by purchasing her a short notice airplane ticket to Israel! Since then Ms. Leifer has claimed to be mentally incapable of being extradited to Australia for trial. Yet thanks to some undercover sleuthing, we learned that her mental incapacity is the funky kind where she can still go shopping, talk on the phone, run errands around town, and basically do everything normal people do. Fascinating, huh?

Anyhoo, the case has progressed about as quickly as the queue at an Israeli Post Office on a Thursday afternoon. The court called state mental health experts to testify as to whether Ms. Leifer is mentally competent for extradition. Interestingly enough, some experts who said she was competent then changed their mind and ruled that Ms. Leifer is not competent to stand trial.

Yet, and we really need to stress this, absolutely NONE of this was due to illegal influence or intimidation from Deputy Health Minister Litzman. No way. That’s crazy! Just because he has the power to affect the careers of State Mental Health experts. Or because the police recommended his indictment on this issue for “fraud, breach of trust, and impeachment in testimony.” We’re still not convinced. Besides, Mr. Litzman spelled out multiple scenarios where he would support Leifer’s extradition.

“If Malka votes for Lieberman, she can pack her bags.” Mr. Litzman informed the Daily Freier. “Or if she buys a phone with Internet Connectivity. Or, you know, if she breaks Shabbes.”

The Daily Freier admonished Minister Litzman that this case and his behavior was turning a lot of average Israelis against him, but he dismissed the charge. “They should thank me! Think of how many new Hilonim that we created with this case!”