Hanoch Milwidsky and Olesya: Investigation of Blackmail Claims, Blocked Testimony, and Political Cover
Bnei Baruch Investigation · Entry point · Part 3 of 4
In 2021, Hanoch Milwidsky filed a lawsuit over the distribution of an intimate image and withdrew it when an expert examination of the file and witness testimony became a prospect. TheMarker later examined that procedural knot separately: the question of the photograph already existed in 2021, long before the parliamentary blackmail claim.
On September 5, 2022, two months before the Knesset elections, Bnei Baruch countered with a 2.87 million shekel lawsuit in the Lod District Court against former bodyguard Binyamin Rafaeli (“Boki”). The legal team was led by attorneys Tzvi Gelman, Erez Percy, and Dan Shavel. Two years later, in the fall of 2024, Milwidsky brought the same affair to the parliamentary podium and called the entire story a years-long blackmail.
The photograph and the parliamentary rhetoric frame the more consequential sequence: Olesya’s story, the pre-court briefing, disputed affidavits, the witness who was not called, and the LAHAV 433 investigation.
In this article: Olesya’s briefing and the amounts · the blackmail version and the photograph · the witness who was not called · LAHAV 433 and blocked testimony
Milwidsky and Bnei Baruch
Milwidsky’s version comes from inside the case rather than from a detached parliamentary observer. He was legal counsel to Bnei Baruch, the movement covered by TheMarker, The Seventh Eye, and Galei Tzahal. That status is central here: Olesya’s earlier testimony, affidavits, and later statements all became procedural material.
For many years, Milwidsky served as the organization’s legal counsel; publications connected him to legal pressure on critics of the movement and to public defense of its leadership. As The Seventh Eye wrote, his municipal path through “Beyachad,” the 2022 Likud primaries, and his later parliamentary career formed part of the advancement of Kabbalah La'Am people into politics. His blackmail version therefore comes from inside the movement’s defense network.
Early Background and the Logic of Defense
Earlier, in 2014, Milwidsky was already near a public allegation: an Israeli woman identified as “K.” told Omri Maniv about an attempted sexual assault; he denied everything. News 12 / Mako listed checking points: K.'s polygraph, confirmation from her then-flatmate that she immediately told her about it, and Milwidsky’s own polygraph in support of his denial. That episode remains background here: before Olesya’s story, public disputes already existed around his conduct with women.
Milwidsky’s broader legal and political role is covered in the separate profile of his work for Bnei Baruch. Olesya’s line follows a different sequence: testimony, affidavits, the photograph, the blackmail version, and the later questioning at LAHAV 433.
In a News 12 investigation, victim “A” (Olesya) later said directly that Milwidsky instructed her before the court hearing on how to deny sexual relations with Laitman. Her version was later recounted in court materials and by The Seventh Eye. In the same defamation lawsuit and in later publications, it was recorded that attorney Tzvi Gelman and Dr. Eli Vinokur, who translated the instructions into Russian, were present at that briefing meeting according to Rafaeli’s affidavit. The same court account says Olesya cried during the briefing, feeling that she was being forced to lie about a rape she attributed to Laitman. According to Rafaeli, the organization had to pay Olesya $20,000 for the false version of events in court; Bnei Baruch, Milwidsky, and Gelman denied those claims.
Haaretz added procedural details from Rafaeli’s motion: Rafaeli himself had given testimony in the investigation against Milwidsky, and in Bnei Baruch’s civil lawsuit he asked to call A. by video link. The same report said A. had two affidavits, one of them signed by Milwidsky, and that one document included a claim about an offer of $50,000 in exchange for not testifying. The amounts in the sources therefore have to be read separately: $20,000 in Rafaeli’s account of the false court version, and $50,000 as a separate item from the published court motion.
Three Images - One Face
The collage distributed by Milwidsky’s opponents is relevant as the material around which the blackmail version emerged. On the left are beach selfies with identifying features marked; on the right are a WhatsApp message and an intimate image; at the bottom is a photograph of the same person with Prime Minister Netanyahu at an official meeting.
The Seventh Eye’s court account from April 16, 2025, placed this collage inside the proceeding. Milwidsky claimed that the photograph was a fake and a blackmail tool, while Rafaeli’s attorney Dudi Parhiya asked him a different question in the Lod District Court: whether the image was a frame from a video that, according to the defense version, he himself had sent to A. Milwidsky answered: “Nonsense,” denying both the authenticity of that version and the photograph’s connection to sexual relations with A.
The September 18, 2024 TheMarker publication adds a procedural fork: back in January 2021, Appelbaum’s side tried to raise the question of examining the image and possibly calling the woman who, according to its version, could confirm receiving the photograph from Milwidsky. The case never reached that examination; the proceeding was withdrawn as part of an agreement. The later parliamentary version about blackmail therefore sits on top of an existing court episode in which authenticity was never checked.
In the photo, Hanoch sends himself from his phone to Olesya while his wife and children are in the next room.
June 19, 2023. Education Committee
On June 19, 2023, at a meeting of the Knesset Education, Culture, and Sports Committee, MK Ofer Cassif (Hadash-Ta’al) brought the topic back into the parliamentary room; Ynet reported a sharp exchange between him and Milwidsky.
The later gap recorded by TheMarker is more important: Milwidsky called what happened blackmail, but for several years after the image appeared he did not file a police complaint over it; a check through Knesset security also did not confirm that a complaint had been submitted through that channel.
The Civil Proceeding and Victim “A”
Alongside the parliamentary microphone, the civil defamation case continued in Lod District Court: the association was demanding 2.8 million shekels from a former employee. In that proceeding, Bnei Baruch tried to defend its version of events while keeping out the woman whose words form the basis of the criminal line.
The court refused to call victim “A.” Milwidsky spoke publicly about blackmail and political persecution; the civil proceeding remained closed to her testimony. That procedural fork is covered in the separate article on the witness who was not called.
Olesya. Moscow. Blocked Testimony
In the photo, Laitman with Olesya at a congress in Russia (2005/08/20), persuading her to come to a congress in Israel to continue their acquaintance.
In July 2025, the central investigative unit LAHAV 433 summoned Hanoch Milwidsky for questioning under warning on suspicion of indecent acts, rape, and inducement of a witness. According to Olesya’s version as presented in publications about the case, Michael Laitman systematically abused her; then she was forced to give false testimony in court in favor of the organization. Milwidsky, according to the same version, drove her to a hotel and sexually assaulted her there as well.
The publications differ on the city: N12 / Mako and Kan wrote about Tel Aviv, while Rafaeli’s motion in Haaretz’s account referred to Petah Tikva. In the same month, Milwidsky’s longtime partner in lawsuits, Tzvi Gelman, and Gordon College vice president Eli Vinokur were also questioned under warning in Lod in this case.
Milwidsky defended himself with a version of “political persecution,” for which, according to court accounts, no evidence was presented. In the trial over the organization’s lawsuit against Rafaeli, he stated that he had been “more or less a driver” for Olesya.
The July 27, 2025 TheMarker article adds the central frame: according to the newspaper’s assessment, the investigation against Milwidsky does not claim to reveal the full picture around Kabbalah La'Am and Michael Laitman. That changes the weight of Olesya’s story. Her case could have tested who prepared the testimony, who translated the instructions, who protected Laitman, and why the line concerning the movement’s own leader remained at the edge of the investigation.
In the summer of 2024, a LAHAV 433 investigative team, part of Israel Police’s national unit for major crimes and corruption cases, first sent a delegation to Moscow. The meeting with Olesya took place and was officially recorded. She described what had happened. On July 26, 2025, a video interview with Olesya for News 12 was released, in which she quoted Milwidsky’s phrase in his office: “We are having a professional conversation, and in the middle of it he says: ‘Let’s fuck, everyone does it.’” Earlier, she had stated directly that Milwidsky gets what he wants by frightening victims with violence.
Had her testimony reached a criminal court, it could have become central to assessing the suspicions against Milwidsky and checking the allegations against Laitman. The later attempt to call Olesya as a witness in the civil proceeding failed: the question of her participation remained in a separate procedural dispute, and the court did not open a new stage of testimony for her.
In the civil proceeding, this line stalled. Olesya’s story brings together a lawmaker, a lawyer, inner-circle people, and documents capable of turning dangerous testimony into a form convenient for the movement. The blocked chance to test that testimony is the center of this article; the photograph is context.
Milwidsky was reelected to the Knesset. In September 2024, he stood at the microphone and said he was a victim of blackmail.