Police Recommend Indicting Israeli Health Minister For Aiding Alleged Pedophile

Israeli Health Minister Yaakov Litzman. Image by JACK GUEZ/AFP/Getty Images
JERUSALEM (JTA) — The Israel Police recommended indicting Israeli lawmaker Yaakov Litzman for bribery and aiding an alleged pedophile.
Litzman, who heads the haredi Orthodox United Torah Judaism party and serves as deputy health minister, could be charged with fraud and breach of trust for helping alleged child sex abuser Malka Leifer including preventing her from being extradited to Australia where she faces 74 counts of child abuse, and for bribery for helping to prevent the shutdown of a food business that the health ministry determined had serious sanitation violations.
The police recommendation that Litzman be charged with bribery, fraud, witness tampering and breach of trust was announced on Tuesday.
He is accused of offering special benefits to Health Ministry employees in exchange for their preventing the Jerusalem-area restaurant and catering service from being closed.
In the Leifer case, Litzman is accused of pressuring Jerusalem district psychiatrist Dr. Jacob Charnes to say that Leifer was mentally unfit to stand trial.
Because of the psychiatrist’s opinion police did not call on Leifer to testify, which was a major reason her extradition was not approved. In early 2018, following testimony from neighbors and others and following new psychological assessments, psychiatrists determined that Leifer was faking her mental status and that she was mentally fit to stand trial. She has been in prison for over a year but has not yet been extradited.
Litzman denies the accusations; the police recommendation comes less than six weeks before national elections.
The Jerusalem District Attorney’s Office will decide whether Litzman should be indicted.
The Forward is free to read, but it isn’t free to produce

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward.
Now more than ever, American Jews need independent news they can trust, with reporting driven by truth, not ideology. We serve you, not any ideological agenda.
At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse.
This is a great time to support independent Jewish journalism you rely on. Make a gift today!
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
Support our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
Most Popular
- 1
Opinion The dangerous Nazi legend behind Trump’s ruthless grab for power
- 2
News Who is Alan Garber, the Jewish Harvard president who stood up to Trump over antisemitism?
- 3
News Student protesters being deported are not ‘martyrs and heroes,’ says former antisemitism envoy
- 4
Opinion What Jewish university presidents say: Trump is exploiting campus antisemitism, not fighting it
In Case You Missed It
-
Culture This Jewish New Yorker survived the Holocaust and the Hungarian Revolution, and is still helping others today
-
Fast Forward Trump says he and Netanyahu are ‘on the same side of every issue’ following talks on Iran, tariffs
-
Fast Forward California school board members accused of antisemitism during contentious meeting
-
Fast Forward Over 100 Chicago-area rabbis and cantors condemn Trump’s campus crackdown
-
Shop the Forward Store
100% of profits support our journalism
Republish This Story
Please read before republishing
We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines.
You must comply with the following:
- Credit the Forward
- Retain our pixel
- Preserve our canonical link in Google search
- Add a noindex tag in Google search
See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.
To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.