Father Beats Son With Hammer, Beats Wife and Daughter, Violates Restraining Order, Threatens Murder – Rabbis Give Him Sole Custody of the Children

You can't get much better proof that rabbis are out of touch than this.

A man who beat his wife and children, used a hammer, other heavy objects, and whatever else was at hand to hurt them, who threatened his own children with death, and threatened to kill his wife has been given custody of those same children by Tel Aviv's beit din (religious court).

The chief rabbi of Tel Aviv is…

…former Ashkenazi chief rabbi Yisrael Meir Lau, a nice bit corrupt man who travelled the world while in office speaking at Jewish fundraisers and events.

Even though on state salary, Rabbi Lau charged huge fees. The checks were made out to charities he controlled.

To my knowledge, no audit has ever been done.

Now, here is part of the Canadian Jewish News report on the father who threatened to kill his own children and the rabbis who seek to put those children in his sole custody:

An Israeli woman with two children is fighting deportation from Canada, claiming that she fears returning to Israel because a rabbinical court there has granted custody of the children to their abusive father.
Last week, one day before she was to be removed from the country, Renata Makias won a temporary stay from a Federal Court judge pending a judicial review of her case.

Judge Sean Harrington wrote that Mrs. Makias and the children “face imminent peril on their return” to Israel because the rabbinical order makes clear the children must be handed over to their father, Yossef Makias, immediately.

While Harrington said it may be correct, as the immigration department argued, that Mrs. Makias could apply to a civil court in Israel for review of the rabbinical decision, “it is strongly arguable that [this] did not take into account the best interests of the children…

Mrs. Makias’ lawyer, Mitchell Goldberg, said the stay gives his client about a six-month reprieve. She was being held in a detention centre near Montreal, after being arrested recently, although that was to be reviewed last Friday.

The children, daughter Shany, 13, and son Or, 12, are in hiding, and she is refusing to divulge their whereabouts. The immigration department has warned that she will be deported without them if she loses her appeal for permanent resident status, Goldberg said.…

The rabbinical court decision is at odds with a Quebec Superior Court judgment granting Mrs. Makias custody of the children and apparently does not take into account the fact that Mr. Makias was charged in British Columbia with uttering threats of death and violence against his family and with breaching a restraining order.…

Mr. Makias was charged with uttering threats to cause death or bodily harm to his wife, but he was released on conditions that included a restraining order that forbade him from having any contact with his wife or their children. He did not respect those conditions and was convicted of breach of the order.

The marriage fell apart and Mrs. Makias and the children moved to Montreal. After her legal recourses ran out, she and the children went into hiding.…

She was granted a divorce by Quebec Superior Court in March 2006 and in November of that year, she was given custody of the children. Yossef Makias is appealing the divorce.

Harrington wrote that he finds it “disturbing” that, despite Yossef’s record and the decisions of Canadian courts, that the Regional Rabbinical Court of Tel Aviv has ordered that the children be handed over to him “immediately and with no further delay,” quoting the rabbinical court.

Or, the couple’s son, testified that he was afraid to go back to Israel because his father beat him and his sister frequently and “always used to threaten to kill” them. “He would run after me with a hammer in his hands to hit me with it.”

The boy also stated that his father “almost killed my mom once by throwing a very heavy cup of glass and he would throw stuff at her like cellphones and plates.”…

Rabbi Lau was the first haredi to become chief rabbi. He presides over the rabbinical court in question. From what I know of him, I don't think Rabbi Lau likes this decision. But Rabbi Lau will never buck his haredi masters, and it is those masters who are responsible for much of the agunah crisis and for horrible cases like this.

There is a darkness in Zion and it is destroying us.