Israeli Lawmakers Accused Of Abusing Children In Satanic Sex Rituals

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In the 1980's a wave of allegations of child sex abuse swept across the United States. Although the idyllic picture of American life had been shattered earlier in the decade following the highly publicized kidnappings of Adam Walsh and Johnny Gosch, the trajectory of the national discourse over child abuse would somehow take an even more disturbing turn. Subsequent high profile child abuse allegations took on a sexual undertone that was absent in the cases of Walsh and Gosch. As if that added element was not horrific enough, accusations emerged that the child sex abuse was done as part of Satanic rituals. The controversy over allegations of Satanic ritual child sex abuse emerged shortly after Gosch's 1982 kidnapping when family members who operated the eponymous McMartin Preschool were charged with hundreds of acts of child sex abuse by California prosecutors from 1984 to 1987. The investigation and subsequent trial into the allegations of Satanic rituals being central to the child sex abuse at the McMartin Preschool ushered in an era dubbed "The Satanic Panic" which lasted from the mid to late 1980's. By 1990, the Satanic Panic reached its apotheosis, ending anti-climatically following charges against members of the McMartin family being dropped.

Despite no finding of guilt for any of those charged in the McMartin Preschool investigation, questions still linger about the scope of the ritualistic abuse alleged throughout the era. The hysteria over fears of Satanism being the driving force behind the increase in allegations of child sex abuse ultimately created a simulacra surrounding accusations made during the era, leading to a blurring between fact and fiction that makes discerning the truth broach upon impossible. Though most accusations in the era have since been dismissed as nothing more than akin to those made as part of a witch hunt, the distortion of events that followed them raised concerns that the hysteria being fomented during the Satanic Panic was used to cover up actual instances of ritualistic abuse.

Doubt over the dismissal of the validity of claims like those made during the Satanic Panic re-emerges periodically as a companion to the revelation of confirmed cases of child sex abuse that are at a large enough scale to attract national or even global attention. The latest episode rekindling speculation over the extent of widespread ritualistic child abuse has emerged out of Israel, where several survivors testified to the Knesset about sex abuse that took place as part of religious rituals when they were minors. They allege that the Satanic ritualistic child sex abuse they suffered was perpetrated by high profile members of Israeli society; including doctors, teachers, police offers, and current members of the Knesset itself. The gravity of those accusations not only causes upheaval throughout the political and cultural landscape of Israel but adds to the credence of previous accusations of ritualistic child sex abuse that have been dismissed as nothing more than a fever dream or conspiracy theory.

Evidence of a network perpetrating this kind of abuse operating throughout Israel was first brought to light in an explosive investigative report authored by Israeli journalist Noam Barkan titled Bottom of Darkness which was published by the website Israel Hayom on April 23rd, 2025. Barkan's piece puts forward the harrowing testimony of several victims of ritualistic abuse that illustrates a modus operandi consistent throughout their separate accounts. The links between the victims claims suggest something much larger and more organized than isolated instances of ritualistic abuse. The horrific details of their accounts are replete with references to Satanic symbolism including pentagrams central to the areas the victims were bound upon where they suffered at the hands of their abusers. The allegations of abuse made by the victims implicated religious and community leaders such as Rabbis, doctors, and school teachers as well as parents and even other children who are part of the Jewish communities the rituals took place within.

Victims made their testimony before a joint meeting of the Knesset’s Committee on the Status of Women and Gender Equality and the Special Committee on Young Israelis. Their testimony shined light not only on the sadistic ritual practices behind the abuse they suffered, but a network that perpetrated it across Israel. According to abuse survivor Yaarl Shitrit, “Their trafficking of me happened all over the country. They moved me from ceremony to ceremony. Naked men stood in a circle. My therapist, her husband, and her son harmed me, and there were dozens of other girls and boys who harmed me." The victim testimony about the abusers operating a human trafficking network highlighted the practice as a component of a vast criminal network. In addition to human trafficking, the network's leaders have also been alleged to be involved in the production of child pornography and using participation in the rituals as the basis for blackmail to fund their criminal enterprise.

Throughout multiple victims' accounts, the ceremonies they were subjected to were each done under the leadership of a Rabbi. According to dozens of pieces of victim testimony, as many as 9 men would participate in the ritualistic abuse at a time. The men would be clad in black robes, with the long exception being the Rabbi leading the ritual who was adorned in white. The religious undertones of the ceremonies were overt, with Rabbis reading directly from the Torah. Satanic symbolism was another core religious element of the ceremonies. One abuse survivor recounted "I remember a pentagram on the floor, usually in red. When the ceremony was in the forest, the pentagram was marked with a hoe and surrounded by lit candles in a circle. The rabbi would bless, 'Blessed who releases the bound,' men around prayed with prayer shawls, sometimes dressed in black, while the rabbi wore a white robe."

The ceremonies often centered around stories from the Jewish Bible, or Tanakh, which were re-enacted during the abuse. One such story — The Binding Of Isaac, where Yahweh commands the biblical patriarch Abraham to sacrifice his son — was staged by the abusers repeatedly. Of all the rituals, The Binding Of Isaac being staged was the most common biblical re-enactment recounted by victims with 5 separate instances of it being found across their respective testimonies. Mock child marriages and burials were also part of the sadistic abuse victims suffered. Children subjected to these rituals were also forced to eat feces, sodomized with Jewish religious items including Shofars, and subjected to genital mutilation.

One victim who testified that she was abused as part of a ritual re-enacting The Binding of Isaac recollected the ceremony in graphic detail. "I was very young. In the images, people and verses appeared....I have scars on my genitals. They injured and damaged them. It involved tremendous cruelty, abuse, humiliation, control, and ownership, all disguised as religion and elevated spiritual work. It's appropriating God to serve urges."

The phantasmagoria painted by the picture of the sadistic abuse itself ironically served to protect the perpetrators as the stories seemed too nightmarish to believe, leading to reports made by victims being disregarded by social service agencies and law enforcement alike. Dr. Naama Goldberg, head of an NGO called Lo Omdot MeNegged (Not Standing Idly By) recounted her own disbelief after reports detailing the ritualistic abuse were initially made with her office. “Several years ago, I received descriptions of sadistic abuse of children,” she said. “The accounts sounded absurd. [But] the testimonies kept coming and would not let up. They described gang rape by men, and sometimes by women. The abuse was filmed, and drugs were used. There were ritual practices and symbolism." When Goldberg was finally unable to ignore the validity of the victims allegations, she brought their reports to Israeli police but she, like so many victims, was ignored as well. “I presented the police with written testimonies from 5 women. To this day, no one has contacted me." Goldberg said.

The reports submitted by Dr. Goldberg were far from the only instances of Israeli police being informed about the abuse networks connected to the testimony brought before the Knesset. Multiple complaints were filed with police departments across Israel over the course of several years. They would prove to be to no avail as each was closed quickly by Israeli police. Police responding to a report filed about a network operating out of Jerusalem determined that they lacked the sufficient evidence needed to perform a comprehensive investigation into the accusations.

Despite police ignoring reports of child sex abuse being routine across Israel for decades, that corruption was unable to cover up widespread abuse with the Haredi Orthodox community in the Nahlaot neighborhood of central Jerusalem that came to light in 2012. The investigation into that high profile instance of child sex abuse networks operating within Israel shared many parallels with the abuse brought before the Knesset, namely in how law enforcement appeared to be complicit in covering up the crimes. Although authorities dismissed claims surrounding this child abuse network, the depths of its depravity were impossible to deny within the close-knit Orthodox community. One mother detailed that at least 6 families left the neighborhood to protect their children. Those perpetrating the abuse were well-known among the community, as were their malevolent tactics. “They would recruit and threaten babysitters, ones who had been molested for years,” explained another mother within the community. "They would tell them ‘if you don’t bring the toddlers that you’re babysitting for, we know where your bedroom is and we know where your parents are and we’ll come and kill you."

Ultimately, the prolonged abuse that police dismissed reports of proved to be too much to ignore. Despite investigators disregarding the accusations made by victims, a pedophile network was inevitably exposed. An investigation into the child sex abuse ultimately uncovered a network of at least 10 pedophiles who molested more than 100 children in the neighborhood's Haredi community. The abuse took place over the course of 6 years, enabled by authorities dismissing reports of the crimes as the invention of victims' imaginations and the subsequent panicked response of parents and healthcare workers who alerted police.

Although police were able to apprehend 6 of the men they identified as part of the abuse network, only 3 were indicted. Of those 3, only a man named Benjamin Satz would be convicted. Satz was found guilty on charges of committing indecent acts and sodomy against girls and boys aged 5 to 8. Members of the Orthodox community attested that the mastermind of the pedophile ring was one of the arrested suspects to be released due to what police determined was a lack of evidence. Despite Satz's conviction, the Nahlaot case demonstrates how elusive justice is for victims of of this kind of abuse because of the influence of established leaders of Israel's various religious communities wield.

Rabbi Dr. Udi Furman, who analyzed the testimony of 165 adults who alleged to be victims of ritualistic sex abuse as well as another 174 professionals across healthcare, law enforcement, and social service sectors who aided the victims wrote about the pedophile network operating out of Nahlaot in an article titled Ritual Abuse in Israel. Furman wrote how the Nahlaot case was "one of many similar cases, most occurring in ultra-Orthodox neighborhoods." His article would elucidate how well known the abuse was among high ranking members of Orthodox communities, stating "For instance, a private ultra-Orthodox court writes that ritual sexual abuse is cruel and frequent, accompanied by traumatic, accusatory, and confusing ceremonies. The abuse is carried out by large criminal organizations and/or cults and/or secret organizations, with financial investment and recruitment of assisting personnel. The abuse carries for its perpetrators substantial profits such as satisfaction of deviant urges, commerce and pornography, threats and extortion, and more."

Furman's examination of the court's findings in the Nahlaot case also brought the practices held during the rituals to light. His analysis revealed that ceremonies took place as frequently as biweekly, subjected victims to constant and prolonged abuse. Parents, educators, and religious officials were recruited to take part in the abuse. After the Rabbi leading the abuse rituals would conclude a Torah lesson, he would lead a ceremony referred to as a "soul correction" in which participants would stand together naked in a circle in surrounding children stripped of their clothes who they would recite psalms to. 

The lurid details recounted by Rabbi Furman in his examination of the Nahlaot abuse case leaves little doubt about the motives behind why police did not act on reports made by victims. The police response to the pedophile network operating out of Jerusalem is a microcosm of the power dynamic driving the child abuse network perpetrating these crimes across Israel detailed in the testimony of its survivors brought before the Knesset.

Abuse survivor Tameno-Shete alluded to police being complicit in covering up the abuse she suffered, stating “Reality shows us that the police are not strong in handling sexual offenses. No one wants to talk about brutal rape and children being raped. There are unimaginable cases of monstrosity here.” Another survivor speaking under anonymity who filed a police report about the abuse she endured 5 years ago testified that “The prosecution closed the case due to lack of evidence, so I appealed, and it was accepted. I came to testify while on pregnancy bed rest, but the case was closed again due to lack of evidence."

Yet another abuse survivor named Yael Ariel removed any doubt about the heights that the abuse networks reached, stating that she received testimonies from other victims who claimed that past and present members of Knesset were involved in the rituals. I can give names, from the past and the present," she testified. Her complaints were disregarded by Israeli police as well. “I filed a complaint with the police that was closed after a few months, and I know of other cases that were closed.” she said before the Knesset. 

While the prevalence of this kind of ritualistic abuse is pronounced among the Orthodox Jewish community, the initial report written by investigative journalist Noam Barkan conveys that it is not limited to that religious sect alone. While the author notes that most of the women he interviewed came from a religious Zionist or ultra-Orthodox background, he also received testimony about similar abuse within secular Israeli society. Thus, he suggests that a deeper cultural element is driving this kind of ritualistic abuse in Israel.

A senior clinical psychologist cited in Barkan's report attributes the motives driving the ritualistic abuse to the practice an esoteric dimension of Judaism: Kabbalah. According to the psychologist, the Rabbis leading these abuse rituals draw upon the study of Jewish mysticism as a means of furthering their spiritual transcendence. "These individuals distort Kabbalistic sources through misinterpretation. I believe they're psychopaths using Kabbalah to objectify and exploit victims. When 'Kabbalistic' forces combine with sexual exploitation desires, that creates an explosive situation. Anyone truly God-fearing should carefully avoid this movement," he stated.

Kabbalah itself originated as a study of Jewish esotericism in the 12th-13th centuries following the publication of its foundational doctrine, the Sefer Zohar, attributed to the author Rabbi Moses de León, who would become known as Moshe ben Shem-Tov. The publication of the Zohar occurred during an era and within a region where the iconoclastic Jewish thought put forward by a group known as the Tosafot would challenge Halakha, existing Jewish law codified by Rabbis in the Talmud. Tosafists challenged that established order through their own commentary on the Talmud, which itself serves as the basis of Rabbinical Judaism and foundation of Halakha.

Centuries after the Zohar was written, Rabbi Issac Luria emerged as the authority on Kabbalah, so much so that he was exalted to the title "Elohi," literally meaning "the Godly one." Luria's school of Kabbalah would become the standard of the study of Jewish mysticism based around the city of Safet, which is one of the 4 holy cities of Israel, the others being Tiberias, Hebron, and of course Jerusalem. Based on Luria's teachings, only single men over the age of 40 years old who demonstrated a mastery of Talmudic exegesis could study Kabbalah.

In the years that followed his death in 1572, the rules Luria put forward became increasingly disregarded. By the 17th century, not even 100 years after Luria's death, students as young as teenagers were studying Kabbalah. One such example if Nathan of Gaza, a 19 year-old described as possessing sage wisdom who began studying Kabbalah under the Rabbi Josef Hagiz. Nathan of Gaza would go on to inspire a Messianic Kabbalistic movement which demonstrates the aforementioned distortion of Kabbalistic teaching for the sake of personal gain. That template would be followed by the serial pedophiles engaging in the ritualistic child sex abuse that still exists across Israel to this day.

Nathan of Gaza was introduced to a Messianic claimant named Sabbatai Zevi by his colleague Abraham Yachini, a meeting that would lead to a new era in Jewish mysticism that the influence of reverberates to this day. While historical sources offer different accounts of their introduction, the common ground they have is that Yachini met the proselytizing Zevi following his excommunication from Thessaloniki, the Greek city which stood as the epicenter of Kabbalistic study in the Ottoman Empire. Following his exile, Zevi was downtrodden and sought the council of Nathan of Gaza through Yachini. The encounter imbued Yechini with a sense of divine intervention as he viewed Zevi as the materialization of a Messianic prophecy that Nathan of Gaza had which served as the impetus for his inspiration to lead a religious movement to summon the Mashiach to advance Jewish eschatology by ushering in the Messianic Age.

The hindsight of history portrays Nathan of Gaza as exploiting the delusions of a likely mentally ill Zevi by affirming his beliefs that he was the Messiah. With that encouragement, Zevi was resuscitated from the throes of despair Yachini found him in. Reinvigorated, Zevi would lead a Kabbalistic Messianic movement that he was the namesake for: Sabbateanism.

Sabbateanism emerged in the mid-17th century in the Ottoman Empire as Zevi was able to galvanize thousands of followers. They followed Zevi's iconoclastic brand of Kabbalah until the Messianic claimant was eventually apprehended by Ottoman authorities over his heresies. He was then faced with an ultimatum: renounce his Messianic claim and convert to Islam or be put to death. Zevi, effectively disproving his Messianic claim by demonstrating the absence of the same spiritual conviction of the martyred Jesus Christ, chose the former of the 2 options and converted to Islam.

Following his conversion, Zevi served in the court of Sultan Mehmed IV. However, despite his ostensible conversion to Islam, Zevi continued to preach his antinomian Kabbalistic doctrine. Zevi would instruct his followers to weaponize the practice of conversion themselves, leading to  the formation of a group of crypto-Jews known as the Donmeh. In the years that followed, Zevi was ultimately unable to conceal his duplicity. Following the discovery by Ottoman authorities of his continued observance of Judaism, Zevi was exiled from Constantinople by Sultan Mehmed IV to what is now the town of Ulcinj, Montenegro, where he died in isolation in 1676.

Yet, the end of Sabbatai Zevi was not the end of Sabbateanism. It would continue to be practiced in secret by the Donmeh crypto-Jews until a new figure would emerge in the 18th century who would reawaken it from its dormancy. Jacob Frank, a Jew born in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, would claim to be the reincarnation of Zevi born 50 years following his death in Montenegro. Frank, like Zevi, would weaponize the conversion of his followers but this time as a means of infiltrating Christian society. Amassing nearly 50,000 followers, Frankists would engage in mass conversion to Catholicism with the support of Polish nobility Frank was able to negotiate in 1759.

Under Frank's leadership, the practices of Sabbateanism once shrouded in secrecy would slowly reveal themselves.
Frank instructed his followers to participate in ritualized orgies and incest between fathers and daughters in the manner of deliberate violation of Halakha taught by Sabbatai Zevi. These practices were meant to achieve "salvation through sin" by bringing victims and perpetrators through the abyss of sin on a path Frank believed would lead to spiritual redemption.

This central practice of Frankism shares parallels with the Lurianic Kabbalistic principle of Shevirat ha-Kelim or the Shattering of the Vessels. In Kabbalistic thought, the holiness of the Ein Sof, the ultimate form of God, filled 10 vessels with primordial light. However, those vessels were unable to contain the divine power of the light and shattered, scattering its holiness throughout the universe. The shattering also led to the formation of evil governing the material world in a narrative that echoes the creation of the Demiurge recounted in the Gnostic text The Pistis Sophia. The only way that divine light can ascend to be cast upon humanity is through the confrontation with the Qlippoth, who themselves embody sin. This process is referred to as "Tikkun" in Kabbalistic thought, in which navigating the Qlippoth to restore the divine light of the Ein Sof will usher in the Messianic Era. That Kabbalistic tenet serves as the foundation of "Tikkun Olam" in a modern Jewish culture which obfuscates is esoteric origin.

Thus, the practice of engaging in heresy viewed as a means of salvation by Frankists led to scholars labeling Sabbateanism and its adjacent branches as a form of Neocarpocratianism based on the teachings and practices of of the 2nd century Gnostic leader Carpocrates of Alexandria. Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard, credited with founding the school of existentialism, wrote about these parallels in his 1844 book, The Concept of Anxiety:

It is usually said that Judaism is the standpoint of the law. However, this could also be expressed by saying that Judaism lies in anxiety. But here the nothing of anxiety signifies something other than fate. It is in this sphere that the phrase “to be anxious-nothing” appears most paradoxical, for guilt is indeed something. Nevertheless, it is true that as long as guilt is the object of anxiety, it is nothing. The ambiguity lies in the relation, for as soon as guilt is posited, anxiety is gone, and repentance is there. The relation, as always with the relation of anxiety, is sympathetic and antipathetic. This in turn seems paradoxical, yet such is not the case, because while anxiety fears, it maintains a subtle communication with its object, cannot look away from it, indeed will not, for if the individual wills it, repentance is there. That someone or other will find this statement difficult is something I cannot help. He who has the required firmness to be, if I dare say so, a divine prosecutor, not in relation to others but in relation to himself, will not find it difficult. Furthermore, life offers sufficient phenomena in which the individual in anxiety gazes almost desirously at guilt and yet fears it. Guilt has for the eye of the spirit the fascinating power of the serpent’s glance. The truth in the Carpocratian view of attaining perfection through sin lies at this point. It has its truth in the moment of decision when the immediate spirit posits itself as spirit by spirit; contrariwise, it is blasphemy to hold that this view is to be realized in concreto. It is precisely by the anxiety of guilt that Judaism is further advanced than Greek culture, and the sympathetic factor in its anxiety-relation to guilt may be recognized by the fact that it would not at any price forego this relation in order to acquire the more rash expressions of Greek culture: fate, fortune, misfortune.

The distortion of Tikkun to justify the unspeakable acts committed by Frankists as being a means of rectifying the world has since served as a model for similar occult orders who perform similar practices. Just as Kabblah served as the basis for Tikkun Olam, its distortion such as in the teachings of Jacob Frank serves as an obvious justification for the abuse perpetrated across Israel brought to light by the victims testifying before the Knesset about the ritualistic abuse they suffered.

The clinical psychologist who extrapolated the Kabbalistic undertones of the abuse detailed in Barkan's report succinctly described this dynamic, stating "Spiritual frameworks can be misappropriated to justify deviations from norms while demanding blind faith." Just as that dynamic was central to the cult of personality heretics like Jacob Frank cultivated to manipulate their followers, perpetrators of the ritualistic abuse detailed in the report use this framework to brainwash their victims to instill a sense of Stockholm Syndrome within them.

The complexity and obscurity of not just Lurian Kabbalah but the multiple iterations it inspired which have been cast behind the shadows of even darker secrecy highlights the religious forces shaping Israel and its influence on the world. For example, adherents of Sabbateanism and later Franksim become instrumental in laying the foundations for what would become Zionism. Numerous political movements and figures were Sabbatean, including members of the Young Turks. Louis Brandeis, the first Jewish Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court was the descendant of a prominent Frankist family from Prague. Brandeis inherited a picture of Eva Frank, the daughter and successor of the movements founder passed onto him from his mother. These, among other historical instances, highlight the how these forces have been able to surreptitiously infiltrate the highest echelons of world Jewry.

The influence of similar occult forces on religious and political leaders in modern Israel is evident from the testimony of ritual child sex abuse survivors brought before the Knesset. One such victim highlighted the overt heresies the rituals were based upon when she spoke about the deities her abusers worshiped during them. "The gods I remember are Baal Peor and Ashtoreth. I vaguely recall statues. I remember them saying 'our lord Peor and our lady Ashtoreth.' Baal Peor and Ashtoreth are each venerated as Moabite iterations of deities worshiped by Canaanites, demonstrating the heretical nature of the abuse.

Given the power brokers involved in these esoteric practices throughout history, the confluence of ritualistic child sex abuse rife with undertones of Kabbalism, the occult, and Satanism with important political and religious figures in Israel comes as no surprise. As the testimony of survivors of this kind of ritual abuse demonstrates, the narrative that these practices are conspiracy theories looks to be little more than an attempt at narrative control by the forces implicated within them. The effectiveness of that tactic in covering up widespread ritualistic child sex abuse begs the question; how many of the allegations that have been dismissed on those grounds have been true all along?

Originally published by ZeroHedge on June 11, 2025, written by Blueapples.