The court refused to call complainant "A" in the civil case around Milwidsky

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

On September 2, 2025, The Seventh Eye reported on a Lod District Court decision: Judge Dror Ard-Eilon refused to call complainant “A” in the defamation case that the Bnei Baruch organization is pursuing against former security employee Benyamin Rafaeli. The decision does not remove the criminal suspicions against Hanoch Milwidsky. For Rafaeli, however, it closed one important defense path: he could not question, in civil court, the woman whose words mattered to his position.

The path that led there - the earlier testimony, Moscow, LAHAV 433, the photograph, and the blackmail version - is covered in the separate article on Olesya and Milwidsky. The narrower question here is whether the complainant herself could confirm that Rafaeli’s public statements rested on her testimony, not on an unsupported defamatory attack against the association.

This procedural fork had an earlier backdrop. In January 2023, The Seventh Eye wrote that in another Bnei Baruch lawsuit against Gur Megiddo, Laitman was supposed to testify but did not appear: the court was told about hospitalization, and at the hearing it emerged that he had already been released home with a recommendation to avoid serious strain. In March 2023, the outlet reported that Milwidsky and Bnei Baruch’s lawsuit against Megiddo was dismissed, and the judge separately noted that the plaintiffs themselves had not called Laitman as their witness.

What Rafaeli Wanted to Test in Court

In 2022, “A” publicly rejected her earlier version, again linked Laitman to sexual violence, and connected Milwidsky to pressure before a court hearing. For Rafaeli, that was a material part of the defense: if the complainant had confirmed the pressure and false testimony, his appearance in the News 12 investigation could be read as a retelling of testimony he considered credible rather than as an unsupported attack on the association.

Benyamin “Boka” Rafaeli, Laitman’s former head of security, began speaking publicly after leaving Bnei Baruch about alleged violence, pressure on witnesses, and lawsuits against critics. On September 5, 2022, the Bnei Baruch association filed a 2.87-million-shekel defamation lawsuit against him in the Lod District Court over his testimony in the News 12 investigation.

Rafaeli’s attorney, Dudi Parhiya, argued that the defense could not disclose this part of the story earlier because of investigative secrecy and concern about obstructing justice. To avoid bringing the complainant to Israel, he proposed using the attorney general’s office and questioning “A” in Russia by video link.

Haaretz separately noted that Rafaeli himself had already given testimony in the investigation against Milwidsky, and that the video-questioning motion rested on A.'s story, two affidavits, and the claim that one of them had been signed by Milwidsky.

Why the Court Refused

Judge Ard-Eilon cited the stage of the case: the proceeding had already passed the evidence-submission phase, and witnesses had been questioned. The court also noted that Rafaeli had previously requested that A. be called and then withdrew that request, and ordered him to pay Bnei Baruch 4,000 shekels in costs.

For the court, this was a question of procedural timing. For Rafaeli, the practical result was different: the defamation lawsuit continued without direct questioning of the complainant whose words could have mattered to his defense. The broader question of why similar testimonies did not become a full examination of Laitman is covered separately in the article on silenced testimonies.