Hanoch Milwidsky: Cult Lawyer, Lawmaker under Investigation, Defender of Abusers

Hanoch Milwidsky was internal counsel for the Bnei Baruch cult. He publicly smeared women after they complained and pushed the “bought testimony” line through years of lawsuits against journalists and critics. Michael Laitman’s lawyer, serving the cult’s sole leader, moved from the Beyahad list through Likud mobilization, the Knesset, to the chair of the Finance Committee. Lawfare protected the cult and gave Milwidsky a state platform.

An Early Public Trace of Aggression

A published post about Larisa and Erez Ginat, members of Bnei Baruch, stated that Milwidsky invested in Larisa’s business and began a regular sexual relationship with her without her husband’s knowledge. The family broke apart.

In another Facebook post, a former classmate reproduced a yearbook text. It described schoolboy Milwidsky as cruel to animals and hostile to Arabs, making sexualized remarks about a ninth-grade girl. The post’s author tied the text to a man who had already become a Knesset member.

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

In 2022, News 12 / Mako published an Israeli woman’s account of an attempted sexual assault during a work meeting. Milwidsky categorically denied the accusation. News 12 identified three checks: K.'s polygraph, confirmation from her then-neighbor, and Milwidsky’s polygraph supporting his denial.

In 2025, Ynet reported that LAHAV 433 considered calling K. as an additional witness, although she had not filed a police complaint and the limitation period had expired.

The newsroom knows another account of the same pattern from the inside. Hailey Gal worked as Hanoch Milwidsky’s secretary, and there was sexual contact between them; after she reported him, she was immediately fired and removed from the cult. This happened to other women who had complained: the complaint was suppressed through expulsion, so the matter would not reach public attention. The pattern holds: a woman complains, and a woman disappears from the cult.

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

TheMarker reported on Libi’s story on August 5, 2022, and named her husband: Gabi, also Gabriel Wysocki, a member of the same Bnei Baruch circle. Libi said she married him less than a month after they met, and he soon began beating her. In one episode, Wysocki came home drunk from a Kabbalah lesson and beat her in front of their two young children, so badly that she needed hospitalization.

After Libi went to the police, Wysocki admitted guilt. Under a plea bargain, he was convicted for 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 children saw the violence.

According to TheMarker, Wysocki kept his place in the cult after the conviction while Libi was isolated. Before the investigation was published, Milwidsky held documents from the couple’s closed family proceeding and publicly read fragments smearing Libi without revealing who wrote them. The cult’s lawyer shifted attention from a convicted violent offender to the woman who called the police.

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

On a hidden recording from Gur Megiddo’s investigation, Milwidsky speaks with former cult member Rina Ben-Ami and claims one witness gave false testimony for 100,000 euros. Megiddo demanded evidence. Milwidsky ended the conversation. TheMarker linked the sum to witness “B.” The related A./Olesya story is covered separately. No public evidence for the “bought testimony” lie appeared in the later court proceedings.

On March 16, 2021, The Seventh Eye reported Magistrate’s Court judge Gilad Hess’s decision on Bnei Baruch’s discontinued suit against Megiddo. Hess pointed to “signs of a suit intended to suppress criticism”: the imbalance of power between the association and the journalist, and the public importance of the investigation into Bnei Baruch’s ties to ministers and lawmakers. The judge did not finally classify the proceeding as an attempt to silence Megiddo because the demand was 140,000 shekels and some claims involved a bona fide dispute. Hess recognized Megiddo as the prevailing party in the 2017 suit and ordered the association to pay him 20,000 shekels in costs.

On March 1, 2023, The Seventh Eye, and on March 2, TheMarker, reported that Bat Yam Magistrate’s Court judge Azaria Alkalay dismissed another Milwidsky and Bnei Baruch suit against Megiddo, found abuse of court procedure, identified grounds for a SLAPP conclusion, and awarded the journalist 45,000 shekels in costs. In parallel, the same plaintiffs filed a fourth suit in Herzliya for 800,000 shekels. On January 18, 2024, The Seventh Eye reported that the Tel Aviv District Court rejected the appeal. Judge Tal Levi-Michaeli’s decision on the 800,000-shekel claim found the Bnei Baruch suit baseless and stated: “The litigants’ procedural conduct was extreme, lacking in good faith, and involved a clear attempt to forum shop and evade the consequences of the proceeding.” In May 2024, The Seventh Eye called the withdrawal of the fourth suit Megiddo’s fourth victory: across four proceedings, the journalist paid nothing and Bnei Baruch paid him approximately 70,000 shekels in costs.

The recording and the decisions in two separate suits document a recurring sequence: a witness is called bought, a journalist is pulled into years of litigation, and an appeal or another suit follows defeat. A woman becomes the target; the court becomes a tool for wearing down a critic.

Useful to the Cult and to Power

In the photograph from an official event, Milwidsky stands between Education Minister Yoav Kisch and Gilad Shadmon, who came from the same Bnei Baruch circle. The frame records the legal counsel’s move from the cult into politics; the budget project and Shimi Rein are covered in the 50-million-shekel article.

A profile by The Seventh Eye, published on December 31, 2024, traces Milwidsky’s path from Bnei Baruch’s internal counsel to the Beyahad list, Likud mobilization, and the Knesset. According to Rina Ben-Ami’s affidavit, the political project began with Milwidsky asking during a morning lesson why a political tool could not be used for influence. She said Michael Laitman first objected, then changed his decision and supported the initiative. Laitman is the cult’s sole and dangerous leader: the project moved forward after his approval, and Milwidsky carried it into public politics.

According to Ben-Ami’s affidavit, on the election night when Beyahad won, Laitman unexpectedly came to the campaign headquarters in Petah Tikva, and activists, all Bnei Baruch members, rushed to him. A stranger pulled out a phone and began recording; Milwidsky and several others separated him from the crowd, raised their hands to block the recording, and pushed him out. According to the same affidavit, several men from the cult beat the man while he was on the ground, took his phone, and promised to delete photos and return it. Laitman was taken away, others were told to leave, and that same night, instructions went out through the campaign’s WhatsApp groups: delete all photos from the evening and delete the groups themselves to “leave no trace of the connection between Bnei Baruch and Beyahad.” The next morning, Ben-Ami looked for press reports about the incident and found nothing. Someone wiped every trace of Laitman’s visit on orders from the cult he alone leads.

In 2017, Avner Hofstein reported on Army Radio that the cult had mobilized 6,000 people into Likud; the association responded with a defamation suit. Five years later, Milwidsky publicly boasted of bringing thousands into the party. In a joint investigation by The Seventh Eye and Shakuf, David Bitan attributed the creation and operation of the party call center through four election campaigns to Milwidsky personally. A journalist was sued over the number. Then they boasted about the mobilization themselves.

An investigation by Shakuf and The Seventh Eye from December 18, 2024, analyzed an internal video shot about six months before the primary: Milwidsky promises his people “more than a hundred new ambassadors” in Likud’s echelons and names the goal, “protection of the home,” offering no explanation of the term. Rina Ben-Ami laid out in testimony filed with the court where the orders came from: Laitman used his morning lessons to send messages mobilizing students toward political action, “some of them explicit, some encoded in Bnei Baruch’s internal language,” the association’s director Avihu Sofer then “dressed” the teacher’s words in political meaning, and “it was clear to all of us that the Rav was telling us to act for ‘Beyahad.’” This was not party work: the cult ran an agent operation on instructions coming personally from Laitman, and no “ambassador” would have gone into Likud without his word. The full systemic mechanism, the plan laid out to five hundred viewers, the operators, the concealment and the trace cleanup, is analyzed in the 50-million article.

On December 9, 2022, TheMarker reported a disciplinary complaint by the Tel Aviv District Ethics Committee of the Israel Bar Association against Milwidsky for falsely certifying two witnesses’ signatures. As an elected member of Knesset, he introduced a bill to abolish the Bar Association and replace its regulatory body with a council appointed by the justice minister. He turned his legislative attack on the body examining his conduct.

Questioning under caution at LAHAV 433

On July 27, 2025, The Seventh Eye reported that on the eve of his appointment as Finance Committee chair, Milwidsky was questioned under caution at LAHAV 433 on suspicion of rape, indecent acts, and inducement to make false statements; the roles of the other suspects are in the separate article. The request to open the investigation had been sitting with Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara for two years before the questioning; once authorized, police ran the case covertly until the suspicions “matured” (Ynet). For all of those two years he stayed a member of Knesset, and climbed. To his “political persecution” police answered that the questioning followed a “significant development” and that the summons day was set by the political calendar; The Times of Israel showed how Likud defended him politically. Three weeks after the questioning, on August 12, 2025, Milwidsky, by then confirmed as chair of the Finance Committee, demanded through his lawyers that the head of the police investigations division, Major General Boaz Balat, close the case against him for lack of guilt (Kipa, Channel 14).

Satire Instead of a Direct Accusation

Four suits against Megiddo showed the price of direct criticism of Bnei Baruch. The satirical video below turns the public accusations and the school post into a parody advertisement, ending with Milwidsky’s appointment as Finance Committee chair.

The video is presented as a parody advertisement with a voice-over. This is the full text:

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 disputed image surfaced in a 2021 suit that Milwidsky withdrew before technical examination of the file. He himself calls the image fabricated, and its authenticity was never tested; the line is covered in the article about Olesya and the blackmail version.

Six answers “no” and the attack on critics

After the LAHAV 433 questioning, Milwidsky and his representatives called the investigation “political persecution.” The Seventh Eye reported that they presented no evidence for the claim.

Earlier, in September 2022, The Seventh Eye reported Milwidsky’s questioning at Bat Yam Magistrate’s Court. Attorney Yuval Yoaz read Kira Moskaliov’s post to him and asked six questions: did he lock her in a room; block her way with his body; grip her hands; did she beg him to leave her alone; did he tell her she was “pretending”; did she threaten to bite him in the neck. Milwidsky answered all six: “No.” When Judge Azaria Alkalay asked about the woman’s motive, Milwidsky said: “I have no idea. But I saw support for the Crime Minister organization on her Facebook. They do not like Likudniks.”

Below is the full text of Kira Moskaliov’s post:

Kira Moskaliov -

Hanoch Milwidsky's problematic past also includes a sexual assault against me. After that he apologized a lot and said he thought I wanted him to lock me in a room, block me with his body, and grab my hands so I could not resist. When I begged him to leave me alone, he thought I was pretending.

When the idea occurred to me to tell him that if he did not let me go immediately, I would bite him in the neck so he would have to explain the mark to his wife,

it was as if a screen was lifted from his eyes; he came out of the frenzy and left. My relationship with him was strictly professional: he represented me as a lawyer and did decent work.

This is not a dating story. He assaulted me at the last work meeting we had, but I have other stories of creative escape.

There is something interesting in watching how things arrange themselves along the timeline.

I knew this would come too

While denying the acts, Milwidsky explained the accusation by pointing to the woman’s political sympathies. The same transfer of attack onto the complainant appears in other episodes of silenced testimony.

The chairman’s seat changed nothing

A Knesset mandate and the chair of the Finance Committee gave the cult’s lawyer’s aggression a state platform. In a recording of the 2026 budget session circulated by the public-interest media outlet Shakuf, he gives a woman who is speaking two or three points and cuts her off. The ministries’ workers’ committees demanded that Knesset Speaker Amir Ohana intervene: Milwidsky’s conduct toward women in the public sector had “crossed every line,” and female employees feared appearing at committee hearings because of the risk of public humiliation. Habitual aggression became state power in the cult’s lawyer’s hands.