Hanoch Milwidsky: Bnei Baruch Lawyer, Women, Lawsuits and the Road to the Knesset

The first trace comes from an open Facebook post. Larisa and Erez Ginat were both married and both belonged to Bnei Baruch. Hanoch Milwidsky invested money in Larisa’s business, then entered into regular sexual relations with her without the knowledge of her husband, a fellow member of the movement. The family broke apart.

The Ginat case is relevant here because it offers an early view of a setting where personal loyalty, money, and access inside the movement were entangled. Milwidsky’s name later returns at the points where Bnei Baruch had to answer its most dangerous subjects: violence, complaints by women, critics, and journalists.

His move into politics cannot be separated from his work as the movement’s lawyer. The Seventh Eye described that path: legal adviser to the association, the municipal “Beyachad” list in Petah Tikva, the 2022 Likud primaries, and a Knesset seat. The same work runs through the career: defend the organization, redirect pressure onto the people who complained, and turn loyalty inside the group into political capital.

An Early Public Trace of Aggression

Before the case of complainant “A” and before LAHAV 433, public accounts around Milwidsky already included aggression and sexualized behavior. One such trace is a Facebook post by a former classmate.

The post is not evidence in the case of “A” and does not replace a criminal investigation. Its relevance is narrower: long before his parliamentary career, accounts in the public record already described aggression and sexualized hints toward more vulnerable people.

This boy who likes "cutting cats" is an MK today. Hanoch Dov Malvitsky. Shocking. It is interesting what he has to say about it today. Hanoch Dov Milwidsky - Hanoch dov Milwidsky. Whoever is cruel to animals will also be cruel to human beings. It is a disgrace that these are our elected representatives.

Hanoch is a handsome, muscular guy
He drinks both tequila and daiquiri
A friend of Kedmi, Weiss, Carmeli, and Zuch
With them he goes to cut cats
He has a large commando knife
With it he handles every task
With his large and terrible knife
He draws every girl to him
He has a girlfriend in ninth grade
What they do together - truly interesting
Spitting on the walls is one of his hobbies
He hates Arabs and "Peace Now"
He writes books of philosophy and deep reflections
In class, because of him, the walls are green
In short, Hanoch is a man among men
Loved by his classmates and all the teachers

“K.”: a Separate Public Complaint before A.'s Case

The next public trace moves from the school post to a work meeting between an adult woman and the future lawmaker. In 2022, News 12 / Mako published the account of an Israeli woman identified as “K.” about an alleged attempted sexual assault; Milwidsky categorically denied the allegation.

News 12 listed corroborating elements: K.'s polygraph, confirmation from her neighbor at the time, and Milwidsky’s own polygraph supporting his denial. In 2025, Ynet reported that LAHAV 433 considered calling the woman as an additional witness, even though she had not filed a police complaint and the episode was time-barred. K. is a corroborating public point here, not a separate center.

The Libi Case: the Convicted Husband Inside, the Victim Outside

The Libi case puts the role into court-backed terms: a woman, two small children who witnessed violence, a husband from the same Bnei Baruch circle whose guilt was recognized by the court, and publications saying the organization kept him inside while pushing her outside.

The Kan 11 investigation focused on Libi, a young immigrant. Inside Bnei Baruch, she was pushed toward a rapid marriage with a member of the movement. In the TheMarker article of August 5, 2022, the husband is named directly: Gabi, also Gabriel Wysocki, a man from the same circle, marked by an arrow in the photograph below as Wisozki. Libi said she became his wife less than a month after they met. Soon, this near-stranger was a husband who beat her.

TheMarker described severe domestic violence. In one episode, Libi said, Wysocki came home drunk after a Kabbalah lesson and beat her in front of the children so badly that she needed hospitalization. She went to the police. From that point, the case entered the criminal record: Wysocki admitted guilt and was convicted under a plea bargain in cases involving assault causing bodily injury under aggravated circumstances and threats. The judgment lists blows to the face and head, a bite to the wrist, a knife threat, and a separate episode of punches on the day of their son’s circumcision; the court counted his time in custody as the actual term of imprisonment.

After that, according to the same publications, Wysocki kept his place in the group while Libi was isolated. A husband convicted of violence did not become unacceptable to the organization. The woman who called the police and described what had been done to her became the problem.

Before the investigation aired, Milwidsky, according to TheMarker, went after her. He held documents from the couple’s closed family proceeding and read fragments that blackened Libi, without disclosing who was making the claims. Instead of the violence, the children, and Wysocki’s conviction, viewers were invited to see the woman as unreliable and morally compromised.

This is the movement lawyer’s role in plain form: TheMarker described how materials from a closed family case entered a public campaign against a woman whose complaint had already received criminal-court confirmation through her husband’s conviction. The woman with a court-backed complaint was not protected. The convicted man who remained convenient to the group was.

Rina Ben-Ami: “Bought Testimony” as a Weapon

Another episode shows a related move. A former member of the movement, living outside Israel, described in court materials sexual violence by a senior member of the organization, then refused to continue the exposure. People who communicated with her described messages containing the exact addresses of her relatives. A convenient public version followed: everything was bought, everything was a conspiracy, all testimony was false.

On a hidden recording from Gur Megiddo’s investigation, Milwidsky speaks with former movement member Rina Ben-Ami and states that one of the witnesses gave false testimony for 100,000 euros. When the journalist demanded evidence, Milwidsky ended the conversation. No public evidence for that version appeared in the media or in the four later defamation lawsuits the association lost.

That recording leads directly to Olesya / A.. In TheMarker’s reporting, the 100,000-euro claim concerned witness “B.” Megiddo connected it to the same defense method: the suspicion later examined by investigators was that Milwidsky persuaded A. to give a false version in the Appelbaum case and deny a sexual relationship with Laitman. In A.'s case, a different figure appeared: The Seventh Eye recounted former Laitman security chief Binyamin Rafaeli’s statement about 20,000 dollars for false testimony. A. later said that after the legal briefing Milwidsky raped her in a hotel. Milwidsky, Bnei Baruch, and lawyers linked to them denied the claims.

The legal caution belongs here. In November 2025, Bizportal reported a ruling over a 2012 letter by Aharon Appelbaum that called “Kabbalah La'Am” a cult: the court found the letter defamatory, awarded 168,000 shekels and ordered an apology in Israel Hayom. That ruling does not erase later publications about Milwidsky, Megiddo, LAHAV 433 and women’s testimony, but it sets a boundary: the word “cult” in a legal dispute needs evidentiary support, not just a general impression.

Some earlier publications disappeared through legal settlements before the underlying facts were tested and rejected. In 2021, The Seventh Eye wrote that the public broadcaster removed two Kan investigations about Bnei Baruch under a confidential settlement. Courts later recorded a different picture. On March 2, 2023, TheMarker reported that the Bat Yam Magistrate’s Court dismissed Milwidsky and Bnei Baruch’s lawsuit against Megiddo, pointing to abuse of process, an attempt to move the case to a more convenient judge and signs of a SLAPP. On January 18, 2024, The Seventh Eye wrote that the Tel Aviv District Court rejected the appeal and upheld the criticism: bad faith, forum shopping and abuse of court procedure. According to The Seventh Eye’s count, four lawsuits demanded about 2 million shekels, but Megiddo paid nothing, while Bnei Baruch paid him about 70,000 shekels in costs.

One lawsuit in this series turned, with time, into self-testimony. In 2017, Avner Hofstein reported on Army Radio that the movement had enrolled 6,000 people in Likud; the association answered with a defamation lawsuit. Five years later, Milwidsky was publicly proud of the thousands of members brought into the party, and David Bitan confirmed that Milwidsky had built and run the party’s call center through four campaigns. They sued a journalist over the number, then bragged about it themselves.

Useful to the Movement and to Power

In the photo from an official event, Milwidsky stands in the center. To the left is Education Minister Yoav Kisch; to the right is Gilad Shadmon, whose biography is also linked to the movement. This frame belongs here only as the passage from legal function into politics; the budget question and Shimi Rein are examined in the 50-million-shekel article.

For the movement, this was useful. Milwidsky knew how to turn a woman’s complaint into a problem with the woman, and criticism of the organization into grounds for a lawsuit. For a closed organization, that service protects the nerve center.

In the 2022 TheMarker publication, his political rise was examined together with the presence of Bnei Baruch figures in Israeli politics. In the same year, The Times of Israel carried the story into English: the future lawmaker was linked to Likud primaries and to helping cover up sexual-abuse claims inside the movement. The movement’s lawyer was becoming a route toward state power.

A few months later, TheMarker reported the disciplinary dispute. The ethics committee of the Tel Aviv District of the Israel Bar Association filed a complaint against Milwidsky over claims that he falsely certified two witnesses’ signatures. Already elected to the Knesset, he then introduced a bill to abolish the Bar Association and replace its regulatory body with a council whose leadership would be appointed by the justice minister. The conflict over affidavits coincided with an attempt to strike the body meant to examine lawyers’ conduct.

Questioning under warning at LAHAV 433

In July 2025, LAHAV 433 summoned Milwidsky for questioning under warning on suspicion of rape, inducement to give false testimony, and indecent acts. According to The Seventh Eye on July 27, 2025, the questioning followed a long covert investigation and came on the eve of Milwidsky’s appointment as chair of the Finance Committee. Police described the move to an open phase as a “significant development.”

Ynet described the same investigative transition. The Times of Israel separately showed how the party tried to defend Milwidsky politically. Suspicion is not a verdict. The procedural fact is narrower and harder: a man who for years defended the movement against complainants and critics became a suspect in a case about a witness and sexual violence. The photograph shows the lawmaker after questioning under warning.

Satire Instead of a Direct Accusation

Calling things by their names around Bnei Baruch can be costly: four failed defamation suits, SLAPP signs noted by courts, and a bill aimed at dismantling the Bar Association itself. In that climate, some public criticism moves into satire, where the accusation is tucked into a joke and the speaker keeps a formal distance. One such reel compresses into one minute what this dossier lays out episode by episode, and leaves a hard civic question: how did a man with that trail behind him become the person deciding in the Knesset where everyone’s money goes?

The reel is staged as a parody ad, with a voice-over comparing Milwidsky to a kitchen grater. In full, translated from the verified Hebrew transcript, it says:

Here are three advantages this grater has over Hanoch Milwidsky.

One: this “grater” has never been suspected of rape, and no woman has accused it of sexual harassment.

Two: there are no nude photos of this “grater” that were sent, by mistake or on purpose, to MKs’ offices in the Knesset — did you know there is a Likud MK whose photos like that went around? Like crazy!!!

Three: nobody ever wrote about this “grater” in a yearbook: a friend of Kedmi, Weiss, Carmeli, and Zuch, with whom he goes to cut cats. Yes, that is what they wrote about this man, and he is a Likud MK. So why is the “grater” not a Likud MK, and Milwidsky is?

And he is so good at it that Bibi appoints him chair of the Finance Committee, which will decide what happens to all our money. The “grater” simply does not suck up to Bibi all day.

And if this grater lied, was corrupt, backed the draft-evasion law, blamed the families of hostages, and called protesters an arm of Hamas, it too would find favor with Netanyahu.

Because Bibi will appoint anyone, no matter how stupid or criminal, as long as it helps him keep his ass glued to the chair.

The line about circulated nude photos is not a scriptwriter’s invention: a disputed intimate image surfaced in a 2021 lawsuit, which Milwidsky withdrew before a technical examination of the file. Milwidsky says the image was fabricated, and it was never forensically tested; that thread is laid out in the Olesya article on the blackmail claim. The two other jabs rest on material already laid out above: the rape suspicion is the LAHAV 433 questioning, and the yearbook line points back to the school post.

The defense position and why the questions remain

Milwidsky and his representatives, as documented in The Seventh Eye’s court reports, described the case as “political persecution.” No proof of that conspiracy claim appeared in the materials. Other facts did remain: failed lawsuits, judicial criticism for abuse of process, the Bar Association complaint, the bill against that same Bar Association, and questioning under warning at LAHAV 433.

How that denial sounds verbatim is visible in The Seventh Eye’s report from the questioning in the Bat Yam Magistrate’s Court in September 2022. Attorney Yuval Yoaz read Kira Moskaliov’s post to Milwidsky and asked six questions in a row: did you lock her in a room; did you block her way with your body; did you grip her hands; did she beg you to leave her alone; did you say she was “pretending”; did she say she would bite you in the neck if you did not let go. Six answers: “No.” When Judge Alkalay asked what motive the woman would have to write such things about him, Milwidsky replied: “I have no idea. What I did see was support on her Facebook for the Crime Minister organization — they don’t like Likudniks.” The full text of Moskaliov’s post is in the article on the witness who was not called.

By 2025, the record was no longer a set of random episodes. It was the career of a man who repeatedly appears beside the same sequence: a woman’s complaint becomes an attack on the woman, a critic receives a lawsuit, and the movement preserves its face. The related investigative question, the questioning of Tzvi Galman and Eli Vinokur, is examined separately; the broader shift from the substance of complaints to the person who complained is handled in the article on silenced testimonies.