Our new print issue is a definitive take on the many failures of the Biden White House. Last year, an award-winning Netflix documentary made a pop culture phenomenon out of Israeli con artist Simon Leviev — the so-called Tinder Swindler, a fraudster from Tel Aviv who made millions running what can only be described as a Ponzi scheme of women.
The documentary details a life of luxury, lived on the dime of women Leviev meets on Tinder, persuaded to loan him money or take on debts for him, with the funds of one unsuspecting woman covered by the next.
The documentary is compelling, if sinisterly so. But behind his own status as a wanted man — indeed, in states that count as Israeli allies — is a persistent story of criminals using Israel as a hideout in which to evade justice elsewhere. Extradition is often a controversial issue in both law and international relations. But for all the myriad examples of abuse of extradition procedure, the claim by the Israeli state to offer a sanctuary in Palestine to all Jews has, by its very token of unconditionality, created a precedent for people suspected or guilty of crimes to quickly board a flight to Tel Aviv.
At the heart of this tendency is the Israeli Law of Return. This law would itself be absurd enough in its discrimination for claiming a Jewish right to be in Palestine based on ancestral claims that are two millennia old, and made more so for denying a right of return to millions of living Palestinians driven out by the Nakba and further Israeli violence before and after Some at least have realized that the state might not want to harbor criminals.
This, however, has not necessarily stopped those who posed a threat to public welfare elsewhere from subsequently seeking sanctuary in the Israeli state in Palestine. Prime Minister Menachem Begin, out of concern that Jewish defendants could face antisemitism abroad, legislated against extraditions in favor of Jews having a right to be tried in Israeli courts instead.
