Israeli Lawmakers Urge Repatriation of 100 Children Rescued from Cult in Guatemala

By: Batya Jerenberg, World Israel News

The Knesset Committee for Immigration, Absorption and Diaspora Affairs urged the government Monday to repatriate 100 of 160 children rescued in December from a Jewish cult in Guatemala who are seemingly eligible for Israeli citizenship.

The other 60 are American and Canadian citizens.

In the hearing, the MKs were told that the minors being held in various shelters in the Central American country, whose authorities raided the compound of the radical Lev Tahor sect after allegations of severe child abuse there prompted them to act.

They will not be kept in the facilities much longer, however, and are in great danger of being returned to the cult if the Israeli government doesn’t act immediately, the aunt of four of the children told the Committee.

“The police in Guatemala did the hard work for the State of Israel, and now the government must complete the work and bring them to Israel,” said Orit Cohen Amir. “If the Israeli government does not wake up, the children will return to experiencing mental, sexual and physical abuse.”

Shas MK Yinon Azoulay agreed that the issue was urgent.

“The children in the cult are in danger of death,” he said, and the government must bring them to the country “and ensur[e] they are in appropriate absorption frameworks.”

This would need intense psychological treatment for the terrible sexual and physical traumas they have undergone, the MKs were told.

The cult starves its members due to its twisted ideals of kashruth, it is “forbidden to receive medical treatment,” cult survivor Amir Boyer attested, and “there is no contact with the outside world.”

It has been previously reported that Lev Tahor leaders have used even young girls in the group as their sex slaves, and Azoulay testified that “within the cult there are children who are 13 years old who are already parents.”

A legal representative of the families of those ensnared, Maya Nussbaum, said that if a rescue operation is not implemented, “We fear that … the children will be smuggled to secret locations around the world as has been the case until now. The legal phase has already exhausted itself, now is the time for active actions to bring the survivors.”

The children will have homes to go to, she noted, as “We have submitted dozens of requests for guardianship to date.”

MK Gilad Kariv, the Committee’s chairman, said that his group will be keeping a “close” eye on the issue, as the State “cannot remain indifferent” to the children who are residents of Israel and is “obligated to work to return them to the country and provide them with protection – as we would do for any Israeli citizen who is in danger overseas.”

In response, a representative of the Prime Minister’s Office called it a “complicated matter with many aspects and we are trying to understand all the details.”

By contrast, an attorney from the Justice Ministry said, “We have an excellent understanding of the international legal tools that need to be worked on … thanks to the Israeli delegation that went to Guatemala.”

“The children are currently not under the effective control of the cult, and this allows us to use legal tools to bring them to Israel,” Yaakov Friedberg said, while noting that 33 guardianship orders have been ordered to date.

Foreign Ministry officials noted that the ministry is “in constant contact” with the Guatemalan authorities on the issue and that “the State of Israel’s involvement in the return of the children is clear and unequivocal.”

(WorldIsraelNews.com)